Legal Thoughts On The Restrictions On Rare Earth Export Measures In China, The United States And Europe

Rare earths are critical raw materials for high-tech products and the national defense industry. In a long period, China met the most demand of the global market with a keen price.As estimated, China’s rare earths reserves could be exhausted in 15-20 years.And the excessive development ruined the environment. In order to protect its rare earth resources and environment, China implemented a serious of rare earths export restriction measures including export quotas and export duties. Regarding China’s rare earths export restrictions, US, EU, Japan filed a WTO complaint against China in September 2012.On March 26,2014, the world trade organization (WTO) adapted the panel report of China-Measures Related to the Exportation of Rare Earths, Tungsten, and Molybdenum, which found China’s measures related to export restriction are inconsistent with WTO laws.The United States, the European Union and Japan thought that China’s export restriction measures related to the natural resources such as rare earths, tungsten, molybdenum products violated WTO rules and China’s WTO accession commitments, specific export restrictions including export tariffs, quotas and trading rights control, etc.After the preliminary ruling the panel to the case, the panel found that China’s measures related to the exportation of Rare Earths, Tungsten, and Molybdenum are inconsistent with GATT1994, the China’s WTO Accession Protocol and the related provisions of Report of the Working Party on the Accession of China. The main content of this dissertation includes weather China’s export restriction measures violate its commitments and WTO rules and the reasons; and according to this situation, how Chinese authorities deal with;and so on.Specifically, this dissertation is divided into five parts:The first part:brief introduction of the current situation of China’s rare earth resources and reasons why the dispute occured;The second part: the process of "China-Rare Earths" and main points of the panel’s key findings;The third part: the main reason why the panel found China’s export restriction measures violation.The fourth part:on the basis of the interpretation of the panel’s report, analyze the reasons why China lost in this case.The fifth part:facing the increasing resource consumption and serious environmental pollution, how to develop our natural resources protection system?The author will give some advice in this section.