The Research Of WTO And Chinese Export Restrictions On Natural Resources

Natural resources are fundamental for human life. Natural resources itself has the different characteristics with other goods, so we need to pay more attention. The volume of natural resources trade plays an important part in international trades. Both the world and the natural resources trade got great developed hugely and the scale of trade expand constantly both the whole world and China. As the world’s largest trade country, China has exported numerous mineral resources to meet the world’s demands. According to the China’s national situation, although China has abundant natural resources, the volume of per capital is not enough. With the continued development of economic and society, the consumption of natural resources has increased dramatically, environmental problem which is caused by unreasonable development and utilization of resources is increasingly becoming serious. China needs to develop and utilize natural resources reasonably, optimize the domestic production and limit the export of natural resources so as to achieve sustainable development. At present, China begin to strengthen the comprehensive management of domestic natural resources, including measures to exploit as well as protect the natural resources, improve the rate of utilization, extend the industrial chain, enhance the added value of the resources and implement export restrictions. However, as a WTO member, by these means, it is very vulnerable to be accused by the other members of WTO and lead to trade frictions and disputes. In the WTO legal framework, It is a severe problem for China to master the relevant WTO rules on the protection of natural resources and to implement the appropriate export restrictions to protect own natural resources through the existing WTO rules.First, the concepts related to the natural resources is defined, its unique characteristics are summarized in terms of economics. Then, explore the current development and characteristics of the natural resources trade between the world and China from different angles and form the more comprehensive understanding of the current trade situation about natural resources. Secondly, it describes the main WTO export restrictions rules and general exceptions related to natural resources, and analyze the export restriction policies on natural resource in the domestic and the compliance between the China’s accession commitments to WTO on natural resource export restrictions and WTO rules profoundly. Finally, combined with the former research of WTO and Chinese export restrictions on natural resources, we give an analysis on these two typical cases between the China Raw Materials case and Rare Earth case. Therefore, we have a clear understanding about the specific applied conditions and range of the rules. The conclusions which offers a brief summary on the basic content of the article, and hopes the countermeasures in the article have a certain significance to the policy on natural resource in the future.