Major Developed Countries Since The 1990s .20 Consular Protection Mechanisms Change Research

Consular Affairs is an inalienable part of diplomacy. Protecting overseas citizens and their rights and interests is the fundamental function of consuls. Since 1990s, along with the end of the Cold War and rapid development of Information Technology, the world witnessed an accelerating development of globalization. Several major developed contries, such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, Canada and Japan, while facing tougher task of consular protection, all conducted consular service reforms (including the reform of consular protection mechanism). Although specific measures and contents of the reform are different, similar trends in conslar protection mechasnism were found, which focuse on two aspects. First, players of consular protection increased dramatically, which means that unitary protection is being replaced by collective efforts and multiple participation. Second, the approach of consular protection changed from a passive model to a proactive one with crisis prevention as its core. This thesis made an analysis on the factors leading to these changes, positive outcomes of these changes and issues incurred. In the last part of this thesis, the author compared the reform of China's consular protection mechanism with those of the major developed countries and drew a conclusion that China's consular protection reform has taken a pretty similar path as those of the major developed countries. However, as a developing country, China has a long way to go in the field of consular protection mechanism construction, since there is still a big room for improvement in the appraoches of protection.