Study Of The Legal Issues Of Rules Of Origin

With the development of the integration of global economy and international trade, rules of origin (hereinafter referred to as "RO") are playing a more essential and important role on the international trade, whose scope of application are broader. They are used in non-preferential commercial policy instruments, such as most-favored-nation treatment; anti-dumping and countervailing measures; safeguard measures; any discriminatory quantitative restrictions or tariff quotas. They are also used for government procurement and trade statistics. The self-contained rules of origin and its exertion affect the performance effect of world trade measures of one country. Many countries have stipulated the complicated and strict RO, thus it has changed from a purely technical customs issues into a forceful instrument to carry out trade policies. The research of RO becomes urgent and valuable. This dissertation can be divided into six chapters as follows:Chapter I starts its analysis of the concepts of RO. Then it reviews the development of RO and classifies the current RO. The last part of this chapter studies the role of RO in international trade and analyzes good and ill effects.Chapter II discusses the criteria of RO. First it establishes the theoretical basis of criteria of RO. Then it comparatively studies three criteria, i.e. the criterion of change of tariff classification, ad valorem percentage criterion and the criterion of processing operation and points out their respective pros and cons.Chapter III gives detail introduction on contemporary law system about non -preference RO and preference RO in the world. Especially, this chapter attaches great importance on non -preference RO which has law system about WTO "Agreement on Rules of Origin" .Chapter IV is a major part. Based on the status quo of China's RO, it overviews the present conditions of China's RO of export goods and import goods, and analyzes the problems of China's RO, constituting the ground for the later discussion.Chapter V is another major part. Firstly, it examines the importance of RO in China's foreign trade. Secondly, it puts forward several suggestions for the improvement of China's RO according to the requirements of WTO rules.Because up to now we still lack the comprehensive knowledge about RO and because the research of RO requires the practical knowledge about customs, this dissertation is confronted with many difficulties. However, this dissertation aims to study both the theory and the practice by setting up the total framework of RO. What should be mentioned is that RO itself and its potential need further study. So this subject is worth of long-term research in-depth exploration. Any comments or criticisms are expected and welcome.