Research On Jurisdictional Conflict And Coordination Between WTO And RTAs Dispute Settlement Mechanisms

In the tide of economic globalization, with the increase of Regional Trade Agreements, the pattern of world trade has been fundamentally changed. So far, there has been over200RTAs in force, which has risen eight times in two decades. And now up to40%of international trade occurs among countries who signed RTAs. RTAs produce the results of the opening localism. And low external tariff will lead to furtherer developments, intensifying the awareness of service competitions, working hard to reduce the cost of cross-border and customs delays, which will push forward the expansion of trade strategy. These RTAs can play a complementary role. On one hand, they can open up the market and promote an increase in productivity. On the other hand, they could carry out domestic reforms fully and raise the market access threshold. Although member countries from RTAs’are beneficial, they have negative effects to exclude other countries out of the economic exchanges. It is crucial to minimize the negative effects by reducing barriers in the worldwide trade.When the economic globalization and regional integration entangled inextricably, their conflict in jurisdiction of the dispute settlement, has become a microscopic aspects we have to concern. Many countries use of the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO and RTAs to adjust the disputes that continued occur in different areas of trade, investment, services. As disputes increasing, it gradually emerges the competition for jurisdiction between WTO and RTAs.The thesis mainly takes legal analysis, comparative analysis, empirical research, normative analysis and historical research methods. And I investigate the conflicts of jurisdictional in the fild of dispute resolution between WTO and RTAs in the hope of providing analysis in seeking equitable dispute resolving in the international community for China.There are five parts here. Chapter one introduces the reality about the dispute settlement mechanism’s conflict of jurisdiction, the practical significance of the paper, the structural design and the methods of the research.Chapter two describes the overview of the WTO and RTAs’settlement mechanism, analyzes the relationship between the two, and describes the origin from the GATT’s Article24.Chapter three focuses questions into the conflict of jurisdiction of the WTO and RTAs dispute resolution mechanism, analyzes the reasons, specific performance and relevant regulations.Chapter four puts a question that whether we have the necessary and possibility to coordinate the conflicts, introduce the methods and principles of existing jurisdiction, as well as practical experiences.