Under The Scm Agreement Several Legal Issues Of The Definition Of Subsidies For Research

The definition of subsidy is a necessary prerequisite for determining whether aspecific government action may constitute a behavior of subsidy in the context ofSCM agreement, which means a great significance to China, especially in response toforeign anti-subsidy investigations. However, we can find seldom systematic researchin this field. Therefore, this paper, based on the existing WTO documents and relatedDSB cases, proposed a series of issues on the definition of subsidy by means of treatyinterpretation, empirical research and comparative analysis, with an expectation ofbringing a few suggestions to both theory and practice.This paper consisted of three parts: Introduction, Body and Conclusion.The main body was divided into the following five chapters.Chapter one was an overview of countervailing rules in WTO and its members,including a broad introduction of WTO documents, SCM agreement and the legaldefinition of subsidy in key members of WTO, laying a foundation for the analysis ofthree elements discussed below.Chapter two: the providers of subsidy. This chapter mainly focused on twocontroversial concepts, i.e. Public Body and Private Body, and further clarified thescope of subsidy-providers by studying DSB judgments.Chapter three: the main forms of subsidy. This chapter gave a brief introductionof four main forms of subsidy listed in SCM agreement and stressed on the first three,especially the controversial parts which are common in practice.Chapter four: the effect of subsidy. The chapter started from the definition ofbenefits from subsidy, and then moved to the criterion of definition from theperspective of its nature. Finally it came to the discussion of the basic principle andmethods of its calculation based on the comparison of SCM agreement, U.S. law andChinese law.Chapter five: the subsidy status in China and our responses to challenges---fromthe perspective of state-owned enterprises. With the starting point as the analysis ofcharacteristics of Chinese state-owned enterprises, this chapter emphasized on thepotential challenges they might have to suffer, and gave a few proposals regarding ouractions in response to foreign anti-subsidy investigations.