Legal Research On Exception Clauses Of GATS And Its Countermeasure

All legal documents of WTO contain a lot of exception clauses, what's more, their volumes and categories are infrequent saw compared with other international treaties. GATS is one of the important agreements in WTO legal system, especially as the first multilateral agreement on regulation of global trade in service, and its own characteristic also decides the inescapability of the existence of exception clauses. Actually, exception clauses exist in all fields of international law, however it is much more obvious in WTO multilateral trade legal system, especially in the field of trade in service. As the same with other treaties in international legal system, GATS is established on the base of compromise from all participant members, and exerts its function on the base of compromise. On the scale of this compromise, one side is the target of liberalization of multilateral trade in service chasing by all GATS members, on the other side is the definite national public policies and hidden national interests endeavoring to persist by all sovereignties. Between the target of liberalization of multilateral trade in service and definite national public policies, especially the hidden national interests in them, exception clauses always play an important role as the balance.As the maximal developing country entering into after-WTO era, China is going to further open the field of trade in service completely, thus how to be good at invoking the GATS exception will be significant for protecting the economic security and national interests in the filed of trade in service. This article consists of three chapters, begins with connotation and extension of the"trade in service"in the first section of the first chapter, then cites the multiple definition of"international trade in service", explains the universality and complicity of trade in service. There exists the dispute of the basic definition of trade in service, thus the flexibility and framework of GATS is unavoidable which is based on the definition of trade in service; The second section summarizes the background formation, legal status and characteristic of GATS; Then the section three focuses on the legal analysis of the concept, legal elements and essence of GATS. The chapter two fully analyses the main contents of GATS, the section one analyses the"exemption bill exception",...