| Government Procurement refers to the purchase of goods and services by the central or local government(s). This system, as the result of regulation for governmental purchasing activities, had a history of more than two hundred years in the western society. It was first developed during the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. This system was popular worldwide because it is economical and effective and it plays the multi-functions of macroeconomic adjustment, upgrading industrial structure and construction of a clean government. After the Great Depression in the 1930s, advanced economies established domestic legislation on government procurement, and some international and regional organizations such as the World Bank Group, EEC(EU), WTO, UNCITRAL and APEC also formulate respective regulations of government procurement. Therefore, government procurement system has been developing and improving step by step and at present it has a good legal environment.Government Procurement Agreement (hereinafter referred to GPA) within the WTO framework is most important one among international and regional laws and regulations concerning government procurement. This Agreement has become an important international law with the major advanced economies and some developing economices signing it.Non-discrimination is the cornerstone principle of the three major principles which are non-discrimination, transparency and special and differential treatment to developing countries. Because of the plurilateral feature of GPA, WTO members can choose to whether sign in or not, and it only applies to those countries which signed the Agreement. Thus the pricinple of MFN does not apply to the GPA. The most direct reflection of the non-application of MFN is that GPA stipulates that each signing Party shall make specific commiments on the government procurement. Thus it depends on a Party's negotiation for their commitments on the specific way of offering non-discrimitary treatment, procuring entities, coverage and procedures. Moreover, even with the non-discrimination, there are a number of stipulations which can be used as exceptions. For instance, GPA includes the exceptions on national security interests and public morals. Specifically, the Agreement allows Parties to emphasize public morals but does not provide detailed explanation. Also, Parties are allowed to negotiate respectively to excempt from non-discrimitary treatment. These all leave room for Parties' self-explanation. There are many other similar stipulations in GPA which all leave room for Parties to negotiate accession commitments together with the special treatment for developing countries.To sum up, GPA is not an agreement which has realized liberalization for it avoids WTO's MFN. GPA just offers a place where governments can negotiate and creates a framework of making commitments. It requires Parties to open government procurement market under agreed terms and the negotiation results only apply to signing parties. The exceptions to non-discrimination principle under GPA is absent from other WTO agreements.Government procurement market is gradually being opened up following the worlwide economic integration and trade liberalization. Reform of Government Procurement in China is also taking place as an essential part for building up a socialist market economy. As early as in 1996, Chinese government promised to APEC that China would open up its government procurement market to the other APEC members no later than 2020. In 2001, the REPORT OF THE WORKING PARTY ON THE ACCESSION OF CHINA stated that China intends to become a Party to GPA as soon as possible. China will give a detailed list of government procurement activities to be opened up by the end 2007, and start negotiations with the WTO on GPA, Yu Guangzhou, vice-minister of commerce said in May 16th, 2006.The impacts of opening up a country's government procurement market are two-sided: on the one hand, one could enjoy the benefits of the market opening of other countries; on the other hand, it must undertake the responsibilities and obligations to open its own market. Therefore, there are both opportunities and challenges for developing countries, especially China whose government procurement system was set up for a short time.Compared with other Parties of GPA, China's government procurement system was developed recently and needs to be improved substantially. However, during 1996 to 1998, China's government procurement has developed rapidly. Particularly, on Jan 1st, 2003, Government Procurement Law of PRC was promulgated and provided a formal environment for China's government procurement. However, compared with the developed countries, there are some serious problems in China's current system, such as low value of government procurement, lack of economies of scale, poor structure, and limited procuring areas. Although China made great achievements on increasing the effectiveness of using fiscal resources, stengthening financing and supervising functions, and building a clean government, the management of government procurement is still not very effective. It is also ineffective if compared with China's other domestic sectors. Furthermore, China's public policies of government procurement has limited application and is lower than the developing countries' level required by GPA, especially the special and differentiated treatment clauses of GPA. China's present laws and regulations on government procurement are not perfect yet, e-government procurement should be strengthened further, the international competitiveness of Chinese enterprises are not high. From the practice of other members of GPA, there is still a long way to go for China to become a Party of GPA. It also doesn't mean that China must open its government procurement market to others at present. Therefore, before the entry to GPA, China should learn from successful experiences of foreign countries' in government procurement legislation and policy development, gradually improve its laws and regulations on government procurement, strengthen policy functions aimed at promoting the developpment of industries, small- and medium-sized enterprises and poor regions. At the same time, China should pursue the Scientific Development, promote the improvement of self-innovation and circulation economy, launch green government procurement, try to set up public policy through government procurement channel, and pay more attention on developing e-government procurement system. All the above measures would make China powerful in the negotiation for its entry to GPA.The plurilaterlism and the exceptions to non-discrimination of GPA provided China with a big room to negotiate its accession to GPA. We should study the 2006 Revision of GPA and make full use of the special and differential treatment clause to developing countries. We should also open our government procurement market gradually and approporiately according to our economic development and absorb the successful experiences of developed countries in this field. We should protect China's government procurement market without violating the basic principles of GPA.This dissertation comprises 15 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the purpose of selecting this topic, the originality of research, methods, and reviews relative literatures. Chapters 2 and 3 defines government procurement and government procurement system and reviews the theories of modern government procurement system and its defects. Chapter 4 shows the general principles of international and regional laws and regulations on government procurement. GPA is especially studied in this chapter. Chapter 5 to chapter 13 are the main body of this dissertation which focuses on the development of China's government procurement system and the opening of its government procurement market. Chapters 5 and 6 describe the setting up of China's government procurement system, its development and present situation. Chapters 7 and 8 introduce the background of China's entry to GPA, its commitments and implementation of this agreement. Chapter 9 shows the gradual approach of China's opening of its government procurement market. Chapter 10 describes China's government procurement volume in the recent years. Chapter 11 studies the functions of China's government procurement system. Chapter 12 makes several suggestions for the improvement of Chinese government procurement. Chapter 13 specializes in the e-government procurement. Chapter 14 makes several suggestions for the improvement the quality of staffs working on government procurement. At the ending part of chapter 15, conclusions are made with an overall summary and suggestions for future research. Furthermore, in order to make it convenient to look up, laws, regulations and some important documents on government procurement are listed in the appendix.The main innovations are as follows: First, systematically study international and domestic environments of China's opening of government procurement market, the latest development of GPA and China's recent economic development. Second, first describe the new developments of GPA and analyze its impacts on China's opening of government procurement market. Third, redefine the development stages of China's government procurement, and consider the year of 2006 as the new start for China's government procurement. Fourth, focus on the contradictions among other government procurement policies namely green government procurement, support for self-innovation products. Fifth, analyze the non-discrimination principle of GPA in depth. Sixth, describe volume of China's government procurement and the relative policies and functions. Furthermore, this dissertation offers some different opinions on the financing sources of China's Government Procurement Law. To be noted, this dissertation improves the empirical method of analyzing the government procurement. Use econometric methods and a quantitative data and charts in the analyses of China's development of government procurement.The contributions of this dissertation are: a) applications of classical theories, new research methods and practice; b) supplements to the existing researches; c) supports for China's policy and practice on government procurement.
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