A Study On Special And Differential Treatment Under The Multilateral Trading System

Special and differential treatment refers to that developing country members can use it to enjoy a more favorable treatment in WTO when they fulfill their liability of international trading. The treatment could provide a balanced development of the world economy, as well as a progress of developing country members. After the developing country members'half of century's tireless efforts, they successfully promote special and differential treatment as a basic principle to deal with issues involving developing country members in the GATT legal documents. However, in the practice, it is not satisfying to the development and implementation of the special and differential treatment.In this thesis, the author discusses special and differential treatment by historical and logical analysis methods from four different aspects.In the first part, the author introduces the origination of the more favorable provisions in a chronological order, and discusses the content and feature of these provisions. In the second part, the author analyses theoretical basis of WTO should draft and implement special and differential treatment from a law prospective. In the third part, the author analyses defects of implementation of special and differential treatment, mainly discusses the "best efforts" nature of the existing more favorable provisions, makes these provisions lack of legal enforcement power; Furthermore, the author analyses the formal characteristic of these provisions in order to expose hypocrisy of developed country members. In the last, the author make the conclusion:China should persist her developing country members'standpoint, and use "recently-acceded members" theory to negotiate with other members in the Doha round negotiation of WTO to promote the developing and hardening of special and differential treatment.