Study On The Way Of Building The Trade Dispute Settlement Mechanism For "The Belt And Road"

Since the Belt and Road Initiative was launched in 2013,it has continued to move forward in the past ten years and has achieved significant development results in many areas.During this period,conferences and documents such as the report of the 20 th national congress of the communist party of China have repeatedly proposed to continue to pursue the high-quality development of “the Belt and Road”.With the deepening of trade relations between countries along the Belt and Road,the possibility of trade disputes has become greater,and the demand for dispute resolution has led countries to focus their attention on the construction of “the Belt and Road” dispute settlement mechanism.Before building “the Belt and Road” dispute settlement mechanism,it is necessary to summarize the experience of the existing mechanisms,among which the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is outstanding both at the institutional and practical levels.From the institutional perspective,the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is relatively mature,with a complete and standardized system of procedures and rules;from the practical application perspective,many member countries will choose to resort to the mechanism when facing trade disputes and achieve more satisfactory results,and it has a high usage rate,as of May 2022,the number of cases resorted to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is 612.Therefore,the WTO dispute settlement mechanism has important implications for the construction of “the Belt and Road” dispute settlement mechanism.This paper analyzes from three aspects.Firstly,it starts with an analysis of the current situation of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism,introduces its development history,explains its procedures,and summarizes its operation in the world,developing countries and countries along the Belt and Road,and analyses the problems and shortcomings of the mechanism in terms of case procedures and member states,and finally summarizes the reform proposals of different countries and scholars.Secondly,it introduces the trade disputes and the current development of the countries along the Belt and Road,including analyze the trade structure and characteristics of the countries along the Belt and Road,then explain the characteristics of diversified subjects and types of disputes,and finally summarize the role of existing bilateral,regional and multilateral dispute settlement mechanisms for dispute resolution in countries along the Belt and Road.After analyzing the operation of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and the characteristics of trade disputes in countries along the Belt and Road,the third step of the analysis is building the dispute settlement mechanism for “the Belt and Road”.This paper adopts the PSM-DID method to study the trade promotion role of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism on the countries along the Belt and Road,based on the heterogeneity of dispute decisions,the characteristics of the countries involved and the importance of the Appellate Body.The empirical results show that the WTO dispute settlement mechanism helps the complainant to obtain the expected trade gains,and that the WTO mechanism remains trade facilitating when the case involves anti-dumping or countervailing measures and when the proceedings advance to enforcement review or authorized retaliation procedures;but not when the case involves sensitive areas such as agriculture.While the trade retaliatory capacity of the complainant,and the alternative trade measures of the respondent have opposite effects on the trade promotion effect of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism,with the former positively and the latter negatively correlated.Finally,based on the conclusions drawn from the above study,the principles and basic ideas for the construction of the dispute settlement mechanism for “the Belt and Road” are proposed,and concrete suggestions for the construction of the mechanism are made in three aspects: dispute settlement methods,institutions and implementation.