A Preliminary Probe into the Product-specific Safeguard Measures Against China
金孝柏
【摘要】Product-specific Safeguard Measures (PSM), as a result of strategic advancement and tactical compromise in trade negotiations, integrated into the Protocol on China’s Accession, are specifically aimed at products originating in China and feature strong discrimination against China. The application of PSM must be based on the formulated rules, but usually at the discretion of the applying WTO member, which exerts positive and negative effects upon China. To protect its trade interests, China shall take effective measures from macroscopic and microscopic perspectives.
【关键词】Product-specific Safeguard Mechanism Features Effects Countermeasures
【全文】
With the rapid development of its foreign trade, China is faced up with an increasing number of trade frictions with other countries. In addition to anti-dumping and countervailing measures imposed on Chinese products, more countries in the world are starting to take safeguard measures against products originating in China. By October 2004, eleven cases concerning product-specific safeguard measures (hereinafter referred to as PSSMs) have been initiated and investigated by the European Union, the U.S.A., Canada, India, Indonesia and Brazil.It is therefore practically significant to conduct a careful study of PSSMs.
I. The Background and Content of PSSMs
The provision of PSSMs refers to the restrictive trade measures adopted by any WTO member, for the purpose of protection of its domestic industry, under the WTO transitional product-specific mechanism within the specific period of time to prevent the increase of imported products originating in a specific country. PSSMs were first applied against Japan when it applied for the membership of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1953. (Yu Fei, 2004) Under the provisions agreed between Japan and the GATT contracting parties, any other GATT member country had the right to unilaterally adopt measures to protect its domestic industry from the damage incurred by the market disruption as a consequence of an increase in import of textile products originating in Japan. This article mainly focuses on the PSSMs adopted against China.
The PSSMs against China are generally considered as “a result of the perception of China as a non-market economy from the standpoint of some developed countries”. (Wu Lihong, 2003) The Republic of China (ROC) was a contracting party to the GATT 1947.But after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, as the sole legal representative of China, the PRC was long kept outside of the United Nations, needless to say its succession to the membership of the ROC to the GATT according to the international rule of governmental succession.In 1986, China officially presented its application to resume its membership in the GATT, but various reasons led to the failure to reach agreement between China and other negotiating members headed by the USA before the end of 1994. When the WTO came into operation in 1995, China turned to negotiations for accession to the WTO, which has proved another lengthy negotiation process, in which some western countries headed by the U.S.A. demanded too much on China and “unanimously pressured China to agree to the provisions of Product-specific Safeguard Measures”,(Chen Weidong, 2002) which complicated the whole negotiation. Too many vicissitudes and failures drove China to adopt a pragmatic and flexible attitude towards the negotiation for the long-term trade relations with the outside world. In November 1999, an agreement was reached between China and the United States on the terms of China’s accession to the WTO, in which the PSSMs provision was included. When China acceded to the WTO in 2001, the PSSM provision was integrated in the Protocol on the Accession of the People''s Republic of China. Therefore, in a sense, the provision of PSSMs is the direct reflection of the trade interests of the United States and some western countries and is also a result of balancing trade interests and political compromise between China and the United States.
