Legal Theories And Practice Of The Article XXIV Of The GATT

Great changes have taken place in the field of international economic since the end of the World War II. Economic globalization developed worldly and made significant development in 1990s. But owing to the difference in development, geographic proximity and culture traditions among countries, the process of economic globalization has being greatly influenced. To some extent, the failure of the new round multilateral trade negotiation initiated by WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle, mirrored a difficult time for the multilateral trade system. Meanwhile, there is a dramatic rise of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) as an outcome of regional economic integration. In terms of current world economy, regional economic integration is a necessary phase to realize economic globalization. As a major country in trade, it is particularly important for China to acclimate regional economic organizations and take an active part in them for purposes of enhancing a country's open degree, optimize allocation of resources, acquire economic welfare in the region, and realize its economy development. From this point, it is necessary for us to carry research on the legal rules relating to regional economic integration of the multilateral trade system, which constitutes the purpose of this paper.The paper consists of five chapters and is organized as follows: Chapter I mainly concentrateSon the issue of the history and economic foundation about the legal rules relating to regional economic integration of the multilateral trade system (article XXIV of GATT and the Understanding on the Interpretation of Article XXIV of the GATT). If properly handled, regional economic integration may enhance regional welfare in a certain degree and make active complement to the multilateral trade system. The formation of the customs unions and free trade areas, which are the main forms of regional economic integration, will certainly achieve such purpose.Chapter II and Chapter III constitute the main frame of the paper, which discusses the legal text and practice of article XXIV of GATT in detail. The topics under theissue involved the legal definition and requirements of the customs unions and free trade areas, compensatory negotiation of the customs unions, the Waiver Clause of article XXIV, and so on. Due to the complication of the reality, the GATT/WTO could not reach final conclusions on the several topics above, and all the contracting parties/members were not able to arrive at consensus either. Those pending issues may be expected to be resolved in the future practice of the WTO.Chapter IV is concerned about the relation between regional economic integration and economic globalization, also talking about the directive effect of the article XXIV towards our taking part in regional economic integration. Specifically speaking, this chapter discusses about some issues relating to the construction of The China-ASENAFree Trade Area and the formation of the Pan-China Free Trade Area under the framework of the WTO, and the latter is a new topic in both the theory and practice. Doing research on this topic will contribute a lot to strengthening our trade capability and make us take part in the regional economic integration and the economic globalization more effectively.Chapter V is the conclusion part. The author holds that the history and the practice of the article XXIV reflect the development of the international legal rules in the current circumstance. Meanwhile, the conditions about the article XXIV manifest a kind of legislative style popular in the West. In addition, the author thinks that the pragmatism, which is a important method used by GATT/WTO when they deal with multilateral trade topics, is widely exercised through the legislation and the practice of the article XXIV. This method has its own objective reasonableness and will be widely used in the researching field of international law.