Wto Financial Services In Attachment "prudent Exception" Principle

The trade on service is a new field of WTO multilateral trade system, and is governed by General Agreement on Trade in Services. Financial services trade is one of the important parts of service trade field. In the backdrop of economic globalization and financial globalization, the opening up of financial services trade markets has become an irresistible historical trend.The "Prudential Carve-Out" clause is the core clause of the "Annex on Financial Service" under the WTO. It is the clause that coordinates the contradiction between the financial services trade liberalization and the financial supervision while being contributed to the final agreement among the members of the WTO. Then the multilateral framework of laws and regulations about the financial services was built."Prudential Carve-out" clause authorizes WTO members to take prudential measures irrespective of other provisions of GATS, and thus constitutes the safety valve for the opening of China’s financial sector.The content of the "Prudential Carve-Out" clause is not defined very clearly, so that it is very difficulty to cite the clause in practice. This article makes this issue as a starting point, analyses and discusses the applicability of the clause from a legal point of view, analyses the link between the "Prudential Carve-Out" principle and Basel, compares "Prudential Carve-Out" with the principle of Article14of the GATS-general exceptions and security exceptions, and combines with the ongoing WTO dispute case of Sino-US "electronic payment service" measures to explore the revelation of the application of the clause to China.Through a hard negotiation of15years, China formally joined WTO on Dec.,11,2001. After the entry into WTO, Chinese government made a series of amendments to the financial service law system to meet the requirements of WTO. However, there are still a lot of things must be done to narrow the gap between the reality requirements and China’s financial services supervision system. Therefore, it is necessary to further improve China’s financial services prudential supervision system, learn from the advanced concept of international prudential supervision, keep the supervisory measures in conformity with international standards and promote the improvement of the level of prudential supervision of financial services of China.