| "Trade-related issues" is a new issue that comes under the spotlight of the international society. With the decrease of trade barriers, people have started to shift their attention to the "behind the border barriers to trade", i.e., domestic policies and laws other than Customs duties and other border measures, which affect international trade. Thus many trade-related issues have popped out and call for solution. This paper, consisting of introduction and six chapters and with 220,000 in words, focuses on the trade-related competition issues and discusses relevant competition issues related to trade. Its main content is summarized as follows:Chapter One starts from the relationship between free-trade and protectionism by briefly looking back on the history and development of international trade. Then the chapter summarizes, on the above basis, the various competition restriction practices in contemporary international trade and analyzes the reasons of such competition restriction practices. This author holds the view that the restriction on competition has always been going hand in hand with trade protection. Whether today or in the past, trade liberalization was and has been used as a fashionable policy cure, but it is certainly not a panacea. Therefore, various competition restrictive policies remain intact despite various attempts of prohibition. Moreover such competition restrictive policies have morphed into various forms and often lurk under the excuse of the legitimacy of trade policy and competition policy, thus having become more and more rampant. From GATT to WTO, most of the customs duty barriers have been brought under regulation and non-customs duty barriers have become the main measures to restrict competition. Many international economic organizations have attempted to make a list of all those forms of non-customs duty barriers but such a list is hardly acceptable to various countries. This chapter makes an introduction of the classification made by the German scholar, Liesel Quambusch, who classifies non-customs duty barriers into the following three categories: barriers deriving from direct protective decrees; trade barriers deriving from indirect protective decrees; and trade barriers deriving from domestic administrative orders and laws. This chapter also makes an introduction of newly emerged trade restrictive measures such as voluntary export restrictions, orderly distribution agreement and quasi-customs policy, etc. These new measures are the mainsubject of future international regulations.Chapter Two attempts to solve the following issue: how to regulate the competition restrictive practices in the realm of international trade, and what efforts international community (global and regional) have made to effect such regulation. This Chapter makes an analysis of the competition policy and competition rules in regional trade agreements by comparing seven major regional trade agreements and then the chapter summarizes the characteristics of the competition policy and competition rules in regional trade agreements as follows. First, when countries to a regional agreement attempt to regulate competition policy and competition rules, they tend to emphasize on the economic situations of different regions and use the competition law of their own countries as the basis and reach the regional agreement on the basis of mutual compromise and cooperation. Second, regional trade agreements are mainly focused on procedural cooperation instead of unification of substantive laws. Third, before competition policy is incorporated into the WTO framework, regional agreements remain the main ways to regulate the competition policies of various countries. The analysis of competition policies in regional agreements is intended to facilitate a further study of the coordination and unification of competition rules worldwide. In this respect, the Multilateral Agreement on the Fairness Principles and Rules of Regulating the Restrictive Business Practices promulgated by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1980s is still a model international norm even from today's perspective.This chapter also makes an introduction of the Draft of International Anti-Trust Law prepared by experts in 1993, the Model Law on Competition Law, drafted by UNCTAD in 2002 as called by the development in international competition and suggestions of various countries, beneficial attempts made by Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the past years to solve the international disputes arising from the extraterritorial application of competition law and cross-country anti-competition issues, and the discussions on trade related competition issues conducted by the "working group on the relationship between trade and competition policy" of the WTO for the past 7 years.Chapter Three focuses on the discussion of and proposition of solutions to trade related competition issues in the framework of the WTO. It discusses various opinions of various countries, which reflect the different views and conflicting interest between developing and developed countries, and between developed countries themselves in respect of the issue ofcompetition. This chapter mainly analyzes the competition policy and competition rules in the three major WTO agreements, which, although scattered, are by far the latest responses to the competition issue from the international community. For example, Trade-related Investment Measures (TRIMS) talks about the fair competition treatment that should be considered in the investment realm, that to restrict or eliminate those investment measures that distort trade will be greatly beneficial to the fair competition between domestic and foreign enterprises and be conducive to the national treatment that foreign enterprises are entitled to. The Agreement on Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) requires that governments of members adopt measures to regulate those anti-competition practices in the licensing contracts, which have negative impacts on trade and may hinder the transfer and proliferation of technology. In the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) , it is noted that the commercial acts of service providers may restrict competition in service trade but GATS does not impose obligations on its members regarding the scope and implementation of competition policy. In all of TRIMS,GATS and TRIPS, to comply with competition rules has been provided as obligations of the members, which have certainly paved way for future draft of an international agreement on competition. It is more effective that the international regulation of competition policy is achieved in certain realms than to make a separate agreement. This is an issue worthy of research. This chapter also discusses the practices of the WTO on dispute resolution of competition issues. Although theories vary, solution of practical issues cannot wait until inconsistencies stop between theories. This chapter points out, by analyzing some existing typical cases, issues of law application and award compliance in the current dispute resolution system of the WTO when such system attempts to address the competition issues. All of these issues call for further resolution.Chapter Four analyzes the prospects of trade and competition polices in the WTO, with an aim to give some thought on the question why there exist great difficulties in the multilateral regulation of competition policies in light of the various frustrations from the Doha round to the Cancun round. This author holds the view that the reason of such difficulty is that under the current WTO system, there exist great conflicts between developed countries and developing countries in terms of strategy, objectives and share of interest; and the deeper reason is that they have different understandings on trade liberalization, application of trade rules and trade concessions, etc. Such differences also lead to grave differences on thecoordination modes and the application of core principles of WTO to competition policy. This chapter emphasizes on the importance of making one of the core principles of WTO the principle of special and differentiated treatment enjoyed by developing countries. This author believes that any discussion on international coordination of competition policy without regard to the economic status quo and future development of developing countries can lead to nothing but deadlock.Based on the above analysis, this author believes that before the international community works out a uniform agreement on competition policy, a "minimum standard" can be worked out to regulate the anti-competition measures adopted by various countries in international trade. From a practical perspective, to reach an agreement on such a "minimum standard" is obviously more probable and more feasible than working out a competition agreement under the WTO framework.Chapter Five makes some reflections on the current multilateral trade system, which is a sober reflection made by this author based on the above analysis. This author believes that the innate deficiencies and postnatal unbalances of the WTO system in regulating competition issues have been fully exposed. "Deficiencies" exacerbates the originally existing drawbacks and "inbalances" increases the cost of overcoming such drawbacks. This author points out that developing countries should see their own problems, i.e., they are usually politically weak, economically less developed; they are unable to advocate trade liberalizaton and nor can they impose trade protectionism. They wish to gain development opportunities with the aid and support of developed countness in order to improve their economy. But even such is understandable, developing countries should not lose themselves in the process of liberalization. Instead they should unite more because they are weak; and they should seek more development because of their poverty. This author holds the view that the WTO should become a stage where developing countries can seek better development and should not only be a rich men's club. It is imperative to reform the current system of the WTO and only on this basis can the discussion of international reguation of competition poilcy be meaningful. This chapter offers a deep thought on the competition policy and competition legislation of developing countries and proproses that developing countries should carefully address the difficulty in the locallization of competition policies and more importantly, make their own competition policy and competiton law in light of their own circumstances and within their own capabilities.Chapter Six mainly gives a disposition of the author's thoughts on constructing China's legal regime on competition with an aim to contribute to the establishment and perfection of the competition legal regime under the socialist market economy and after the WTO accession. One of the important objectives of China after its WTO accession is to participate in competition. The pressure of competition will accelerate China's reform and improve its economic efficiency. China's integration into the world economy is a milestone for both the world and Asia but meanwhile it is more of a challenge because the WTO accession will bring huge changes to China's trade policy and competition policy and China must make reforms in these areas.These issues also involve reforms on the level of law, especially the establishment and perfection of the legal regime of competition. This author holds the view that the first task is to position China's competition policy, because the competition policy of a country serves as the basis for its competition legislation. The positioning of competition policy reflects the economic policy of a country within a certain period. A country focuses on different directions and priorities of its economic policy according to the different needs of different periods. This runs through the competition legislation of a country. Second, China should work out some basic principles in its competition legislation because basic principles serve as direct guidance to the making and implementation of competition law. This chapter mainly analyzes how such basic principles as fair competition, non-discrimination, transparency and consistency of laws should express themselves in related laws. Because in constructing China's competition legal regime, attention should not only be given to the making of underlying laws in this regard but also given to the making and coordinating related laws so as to make such related laws consistent with the basic principles and rules contained in the underlying law.This author offers own views regarding constructing and perfecting China's competition legal regime. First, ideologically, we should give competition law the status of "economic constitution" and give adequate attention to its regulating roles in a market economy. Second, China should take into account its own circumstances of socialist market economy when choosing the mode of competition legislation. Third, China should, taking advantage of its WTO accession, establish its own competition legal regime with anti-trust law as its core when China constructs its competition legal regime. Fourth, in terms of implementation of competition law, an independent, effective and authoritative implementation system of competition law should be established. Fifth, China should introduce into its judicial system a case law system, which can be expected to remedy the insufficiency of legal resources onthe issue of fair competition, which is being inadequately addressed by the current judicial system.
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