Research On Environmental Provisions In Free Trade Agreements Of China

With the development of globalization, the trade liberalization goes further, which has strengthen the economic relations between countries and promoted the development of economy. At the same time, environmental issues come and become increasingly prominent, leading to the great challenges we have to confront. Countries gradually begin to focus on the issue of coordination of free trade and environmental protection, constantly trying to balance the relationship between them and explore a viable model of developing economic while protecting environment. Following adding environmental provisions into NAFTA, which has made a great breakthrough, adding environmental provisions into the FTA has become an international trend, countries tend to add environmental provisions into their FTAs to achieve the goal of environmental protection. While China, as a large developing country, there is no exception. This paper focuses on the environmental provisions of China’s FTAs, analyzes the background of adding environmental provisions into China’s FTAs, summarizes the basic situation of environmental provisions of China’s FTAs, points out the defects and, combined with our practice, puts forward relevant recommendations for improving environmental provisions of China’s FTAs.This paper is divided into four parts, as described below:The first part explores the background of adding environmental provisions into China’s FTAs, it conducts a detailed analysis from three aspects: the objective link between trade and environment, the international trends of adding environmental provisions into FTA and the practical needs for Chinese to add environmental provisions into FTAs.The second part conducts a comprehensive analysis of the environmental provisions of China’s FTAs. This part states a summary of the general situation, manifestation and main content of environmental provisions in China’s FTAs, and on this basis, points out the characteristics and progress of environmental provisions in China’s FTAs, paves the way for the analysis of the deficiencies of environmental provisions in China’s FTAs below.The third part, following the second part, conducts a comprehensive analysis of the inadequacies of environmental provisions in China’s FTAs, referring to the omissions of environmental provisions, practical difficulties encountered in the cooperation of environmental protection, and the lack of dispute settlement mechanism. And then, further clarifies the reasons of these problems.The fourth part is mainly relied on the analysis in the third part, aims at the three deficiencies, combines with China’s own reality, and by the reference of relevant experience in other countries, makes reasonable suggestions on environmental provisions of China’s FTAs, so as to harmonize the relationship between trade liberalization and environmental protection, improve the quality of our environment and achieve sustainable economic development.