Research on Procedures of the Dispute Settlement Mechanisms under China's Regional Trade Agreements

Abstract

Regional trade cooperation is an irrevocable tendency for the development of world trade, and it is also an important strategy of foreign trade adopted by the Chinese government. Up to January 31, 2014, 583 regional trade agreements (RTAs) had been reported to the GATT/WTO. Meanwhile China has signed thirteen RTAs with over 20 countries and regions in the past 13 years. RTAs play an increasingly important role in the international economic cooperation, especially after the multiple negotiation got stuck during the Doha round. For the next few years, it is expected that Chinese government will try hard to implement the RTA strategy to expand its foreign trade. However, opportunities and challenges are coexists. On the one hand, WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism is an important measure to resolve disputes arising from international trade and economic cooperation. On the other hand, for not all disputes can be resolved by the existing mechanism, especially by the WTO DSM, the RTA DSMs have been widely utilized to fill the gap. Chinese government also drew up different RTA rules and built different dispute settlement mechanisms in different China’s RTAs. However, in terms of their efficiency, China’s RTA DSMs cannot be put on a par with WTO DSM, nor NAFTA DSM. As the DSMs will play very important role after more and more RTAs have been signed by Chinese government with its economic partners, it is of significance to research on and summarize the patterns and experiences of China’s RTS DSMs and to offer better systems.
This dissertation considers the basic procedures of the China’s RTA DSMs as its key issues and focuses on their function and operability. Studies on basic procedures of China’s RTA DSMs are not comprehensive enough today due to either the lack of horizontal comparison or reasonable analysis. This dissertation attempts to make up the deficiency. It tries to conduct a comprehensive review of China’s RTA DSM by focusing on the following four main issues: (1) how to deal with jurisdictional conflicts; (2) whether procedures are set out properly in the consultation, mediation and other process; (3) whether arbitral panels are running efficiently; and (4) whether the implementation procedures are powerful enough.
This dissertation mainly adopts comparative study and case study as its research methodologies. Firstly, in order to do comparative study, it is important to conduct literature review and to clarify the issues and improve my research. As China’s RTA DSMs have not been applied recently, their problems are hypothetical and must be reviewed on an article by article basis. Based on the literature review, I found that issues related to basic procedures are discussed frequently by the scholars but few of them have explained the theories and principles behind these procedures. Secondly, comparative study is applied in order to compare the differences existing in every China’s RTA DSMs and to analyze the reasons for these differences. In addition, this dissertation makes inner comparisons of the forms of China’s RTA provisions and categorizes them into three different types in Chapter II. Meanwhile, it conducts external comparisons of the differences between methods for selecting disputing panelists in different DSMs in Chapter V. Thirdly, this dissertation uses case study in order to find out problems of the DSM under China’s RTAs. Because no case has been brought to the China’s RTA DSMs, this dissertation tries to offer some good experiences derived from NAFTA and WTO cases, especially from the cases of textiles in Turkey and tires in Brazil.
This dissertation has not only found out the differences and characteristics of China’s RTA DSMs and other RTA DSMs, but also discovered the defects and shortages of the procedures in each China’s RTA DSMs. At the same time, this dissertation concluded the experiences and patterns of establishing China’s RTA DSMs and offered necessary suggestions for improving the DSMs under China’s RTA and specific suggestions on jurisdiction, process of consultation and mediation, panel procedures and implementation. Furthermore, this dissertation enriched the content of WTO DSM researches, enhanced the theoretical study of RTAs and provided new perspectives for establishing China’s RTA DSMs.

Date of Award	30 Sept 2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Minkang GU (Supervisor) & Yogesh K. TYAGI (Supervisor)