Studies On The Definition And Implementation Of Serious Prejudice In SCM Agreement

On December31,2012, other countries have already launched sixty two investigations in totalagainst our country.Now we surpass India to be the global largest target country of subsidyinvestigation. The prospects are grim. In this situation, better studies on the related rules of subsidiesand countervailing measures agreement (“SCM agreement”), in order to improve the ability to dealwith surveys have become an important proposition of our foreign trade.According to SCM Measures, Subsidies Measures are classified as prohibited subsidiesand actionable subsidies. But somewhat regrettably, in the field of countervailing, it is lack of theresearch on actionable subsidies. Adversely affecting is a premise condition for taking countervailingmeasures to actionable subsidies.“Serious prejudice” is one kind of the adverse effects. Article6ofthe SCM Agreement makes specific provisions about the definition of serious prejudice, but thedefinition of serious prejudice may be face with complex problem.This article is divided into four chapters:The first chapter summaries up the meaning of the serious prejudice and introduce the WTO’sdevelopment process of the Tokyo and Uruguay background..The second chapter elaborates substantive rules of the serious prejudice:(1)Article6.1the rule of serious prejudice presumption；(2) Article6.3are the constitutive requirements ofserious prejudice,including (a)-(d).At the same time the author analysis on some important keywords, such as similar products; global market; causation；(3)The general composing important documents of causality；(4) The path of the determination of theserious prejudice from developing countries and developed countries.The third chapter elaborates the procedure rules of the serious prejudice including: informationgathering procedures and designated representative. Among them, reverse inference and commercialsecret protection provisions are not clear.The four chapter analyses the application of Article6served as the recommendation for Chinesepractice is my proposed method towards WTO legal scheme about countervailing investigation.