| Since China joined the WTO on December11th2001, it has been more than twelve years. China’s foreign trade gained rapid development and it’s influence in the international trade is still increasing. China has been transformed from a WTO rules accepter to a rules maker who understands the WTO rules comprehensively and participates in the negotiations of the WTO rules actively.With respect to a legal nature of the WTO agreements, generally speaking, it is hard law for Parties legally binding with the agreement through negotiation and consultation between sovereign countries (additionally includes a small number of separate customs territories Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan of China) and approval of national legislative bodies of the membership countries. But at the same time, either from the perspective of legislation or that of law enforcement, there are a lot of factors of soft law existing in the WTO agreements. From the legislative point of view, the WTO rules contain a number of exceptional terms and vague terms which are flexible. From the perspective of law enforcement, the adoption of "amicus curiae" opinion in the dispute settlement mechanism, and the extensive use of consultation mechanisms, which all show that although the WTO rules are hard law with a legally binding, but also filled with flexible soft law ingredients.It has great theoretical and practical value of reaching deeply the operating mechanism of soft law under the WTO rules and thinking about how to use this soft law. From the aspect of theoretical value, the traditional international soft law focused on the study of global environmental protection, international human rights protection, international financial regulation and other areas, the study of soft law under the WTO framework is rarely. This paper selects this field to do deep analysis and research, and tries to build a more comprehensive and complete system of international soft law theory. From the perspective of practical value, the increase of Chinese economy still largely depends on foreign trade, but in recent years, the economics of certain major countries slowdown, trade protectionism is increasing, China’s foreign trade situation is quite severe. The depth study of the soft law operating mechanism under WTO rules and regulations shall benefit China safeguarding its own interests in foreign trade, and promoting the world to establish a more scientific and harmonious international trade order. |
