Environment And Effects Of International Trade In The Multilateral Trading System Under Study

Accession to WTO is an undoubtly achievement for China. The motivations and benefits for a big country like China pursuing WTO accession are as following: long-term institutional benefit and short-term&mid-term improved international trading environment benefit. China has been a WTO member for over 8 years. What's the influence of the multilateral trading system to China's international trading environment? The answers to this are always partial, instead of comprehensively. As long as these kinds of quesitons' concerned, there are no systematic analysis paradigm and evaluation methods. Based on theoretical analysis, concrete facts' review and empirical evaluation, this dissertation aims to study the change of China's international trading environment under the multilateral trading system WTO comprehensively and systematically. There are six chapters in this dissertation and as following:Chapter 1 is introduction. Firstly, the research background and meaning, purposes, methods, structure and main innovations of this dissertation are expounded. Secondly, the relevant literatures are surveyed. The literatures are including the main theory and empirical study of multilateral trading system GATT/WTO and the research literature concerning China's accession.Chapter 2 is theoretical analysis. Policy idea and philosophy behind the multilateral trading system is firstly analyzed, and then using the political-economical theoretical framework the influences of multilateral trading system to trade policy making decision, welfare and international trading environment are discussed. Based on the above analysis, using the same framework the impacts of China's WTO accession to its international trading environment and welfare issue are analyzed. From this perspective, we argue that only the trading environment is improved after accession can China secure its short-term&mid-term accession benefit, i.e. the improved welfare. Besides, we discuss the situation of asysmetric benefits of China's WTO accession in this chapter. We review the practices and facts concerning China's WTO accession in chapter 3 and chapter 4. In this section, the usage of the antidumping measures and other trade remedy measures allowed by WTO and China's Accession Protecol including transitional product-specific China safeguard mechanism, safeguard measures and subsidies&countervailing measures has been reviewed after China's WTO accession. Trough practices' reviewing, the potential changes of China's international trading environment cuased by its WTO accession are discussed.Chapter 5 is empirical evaluation. In this chapter, by using the gravity model the equivanlant tariffs to China's export of over 100 China's trade parterners ranging from 1995 to 2007 haved been estimated. The empirical results show that the change of China's trading environment after its accession is different with different country as trading parterner. Gernerally speaking, since its WTO accession, the China's international trading environment in most markets of WTO members has been stabilized and improved to some extent.Based on previous theoretical analysis, practices' reviewing and empirical estimation, strategies for China's trade policy making are brought up in chapter 6. The detailed strategies are multilateral, regional and bilateral.