Study On The Export Restrition Of Mineral Rrsourses

Considering the significance of mineral resources to national security and restrictions on mining of mineral resources to environmental protections, China has begun to change the export strategy on mineral resources, from encouraging to restricting in recent years. But this change, which complies with the trend of the times has caused trade frictions between China and other countries, such as the U.S. Although these frictions'essence is that all countries occupy the economic interest and environmental interest hidden behind mineral resources, after being submitted to the WTO dispute settlement body, they becomes a legal problem of conformance between our domestic law and WTO rules. Based on the principle of sovereignty, China has the right to determine the foreign trade policy on its own. But as a WTO member, China owes a duty of conforming its domestic law with WTO rules. The WTO, which advocates trade liberalization, prohibits its members to restrain export in principle, however, to realize the aim of protecting environment, it sets GATT1994 Article XX (g) as an exception rule. Thus, to prove the legitimate of export restrictions on mineral resources, is to show that the restrictions are in conformity with GATT1994 Article XX (g).The paper takes logic writing steps of general to special, and its study approach is a combination of theoretical exploration and empirical analysis, as well as comparative analysis. Besides introduction and conclusion, this paper consists of five parts. Part one starts with the introduction of the general theory of relationship between domestic law and international law, and analyses the relationship between our domestic law and rules of WTO. Part two introduces the mineral resources export restriction legal system of domestic law. Part three elaborates general rules on export of WTO and reads the exception rules through the analysis of GATT/WTO cases relevant to the Article XX (g). Adopting the method of combining theory research with case study, part four analyses the legitimate of controversial export restrictions on the trade disputes under the legal framework of WTO, and draws a conclusion that gaps exist between the export measures and the requirements of GATT1994 Article XX (g), which would be our appearance weakness. Part five presents a new solution on how to respond to such legal challenge under WTO, which is to combine system improvement with concept innovation. Hope this paper would be helpful to reach the objection of protecting our mineral resources legitimately under the WTO rules.