China's Textile Trade, The Safeguard Provision Studies

With the termination of the Agreement on Textile and Clothing (ATC) in January 1, 2005, China had expected it could enjoy the liberalization benefits. China's exports of textiles and apparel did experience very rapid growth in the first two months of 2005. On April 4,2005, the U.S. announced its decision to apply the special safeguard procedures to three kinds of textiles from China. EU and many other members of WTO also declared to adopt the textile special safeguard mechanism against Chinese textile and apparel exports, hence triggering a new round of discrimination trade protection.Based on the detailed analysis of the textile special safeguard clauses and the examples of the U.S. adoption of special safeguard against Chinese textiles, this paper aims to explore the nature of the special safeguard mechanism and to arrive at the conclusion that the special safeguard mechanism is used by some members of the WTO as the tool of trade protection and it has posed great threat to Chinese textile and apparel exports.The paper is composed of four parts. Part 1 mainly explains the implication of the special safeguard provisions and introduces its derivation and development Because of the status of a non-market economy country, China had to accept the special safeguard provisions as a compromise and concession.Part 2 studies respectively the substantive and procedure conditions of the special safeguard provisions, by analyzing the key concepts of "increasing growth", "market disruption" and "trade diversion". The safeguard measures, which are provided in WTO legal system, are the remedy for the fair trade. Compared with them, the special safeguard mechanism towards Chinese textiles is more discriminative and much less strict in application standards and procedures. The conclusion can be reached that the special safeguard provisions is an "exceptional arrangement" under the WTO frame and it has betrayed the real purpose and principles of WTO. Bound by the provisions, China has been deprived of some essential rights as a member of the WTO.In part 3, two examples of the U.S. adoption of textile safeguard against Chinese textiles are analyzed in detail to discuss the problems existing in its...