A Comparative Legal Analysis To TPSSM And Research On China's Countermeasures

Anti-dumping duties, countervailing duties and safeguard are allowed exceptions under free trade system of WTO, which are the first three trade remedies frequently used by WTO member countries. Among these three remedies, anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties are to punish unfair imports while safeguards are designed to limit fair imports. The design of safeguard is a concession by the WTO in aiming global free trade, in order to protect the weak domestic industry and the orderly development of trade. It's unfair to the export country to some extent, but has been widely accepted by WTO members as a valve to domestic industry. Transitional product-specific safeguard mechanism (TPPSSM) to be discussed in this article is a transmutation of safeguard that is more unfair and more discriminatory. It's in favor of the import country who implements such special safeguard in many directions, such as requirement of injury, conditions of implementation, the subject country, the reimbursement and so on. Especially, it's dead against china and only one-way.Since china enter into WTO and conclude some agreements which make TPSSM come into effect. The provisions of TPSSM are briefly included in article 16,"Transitional Product-Specific Safeguard Mechanism,"of the Protocol on the Accession of the People's Republic of China and 11.241-11.242, 12.243-12.244 and 13.245-13.250. of Report of Working Party on the Accession of China. Till now, such special safeguard has been effective for more than five years. There're nearly two years from the termination date of the textile safeguard provided in the"Report of Working Party on the Accession of China"and more than seven years from the termination date of TPSSM provided in the Protocol on the Accession of the People's Republic of China. The author tries her best to make a medium-term brief summary to foregoing special safeguard to minimize the loss caused by this special safeguard in the remaining time with effectiveness.This article briefly summarizes the background of TPSSM and its detail of implementation in chapter I, providing the information and facts for the following text. Chapter II and chapter III introduce the main content of TPSSM, compare and analyze the relation and difference between the two kinds of special safeguards and between the TPSSM and the general safeguard, then come up with methods that how to resolve the conflicts in application of the safeguard provisions.Chapter IV and chapter V are this article's emphases. Chapter IV analyzes the legislation in TPSSM by WTO member countries including America and EU, enumerates some important TPSSM cases occurred in the past five years specific for China and analyzes these cases basing on the legal theory concluded in chapter II and chapter III, so as to supply resolutions in the microcosmic field for China in the remaining effective time of TPSSM. The last chapter of this article rudely discusses how integrating legal, political and economical measures to restrict the investigation or implementation of China-specific safeguards and mitigate the negative influence to Chinese domestic industries, especially to textile and clothing industry. Further more, the author also makes great efforts to macroscopically find a way to impede the China-specific safeguards and other barriers or remedies similar to TPSSM in the long future.