Study On China's Agricultural Subsidy Law And Policies Under WTO Frame

Agricultural subsidy is the most important and common policy instrument in theaspects of agricultural support, protecting the law and policy system in one country.Its main purpose is to protect its own country's food safety, maintain stableagricultural prices and guarantee the farmers' income. With the development ofChinese socialism and the successful Doha Round Negotiations, China's agriculturalsubsidy laws and policy reforms have also come to a new key stage. It is13yearssince China joined the WTO, the agricultural subsidy laws and policies had aprofound change and also exposed many problems. At first, this paper puts forwardthe extrude problems in China's agricultural subsidy laws and policies, and thenanalyzes the restricting factors of these problems. The emergence of China'sagricultural subsidy problems is ultimately determined by the objective conditions ofChina's agricultural subsidy. Among them, the applicable relationship between theinternational law and domestic law is an important factor of restricting China'sagricultural subsidy. The primary causes of researching the agricultural subsidysystem under the WTO frame are how to integrate with the WTO rules, how to applyto the related WTO rules in their own country, how to deal with agricultural tradedispute under the dispute settlement mechanism and so on. The dispute settlementmechanism of WTO solves the agricultural products trade dispute mainly according tothe Agreement on Agriculture, Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement(hereinafter referred to as the SCMA), General Agreement on Tariff and Trade1994(hereinafter referred to as the GATT1994). At the same time, China's agriculturalsubsidy is also largely affected by the technical barriers of SPS and TBT.The Agreement on Agriculture and the Draft Modalities revised in December2008are the two most important restraining factors among all the rules under theWTO frame and there will be an individual analysis for it in this paper. TheAgreement on Agriculture is the most important international agreement forrestraining China's agricultural subsidy laws and policies among all the internationallaws under the WTO frame and it is superior to other international laws and domesticlaws in dealing with the agricultural product trade disputes. And the domestic supportrule is the important content of The Agreement on Agriculture and also the core of China's agricultural subsidy. China has informed the eight used measures which weresupported by Chinese to WTO agricultural committee and these measures have playedan important role in China's agriculture and even in China. But the author considersthat the12“green box” measures listed in annex2of The Agreement on Agriculturehave been applied in China while China's “ambor box” measures exist some problems,such as the pattern is relatively single, the stimulating effect to the production is notvery remarkable and the specificity of the subsidy is still not prominent. In addition,China still hasn't applied the “blue box” measures and the opportunity of applying the“blue box” measures in the short term is not mature. The Draft Modalities is thephased objective of Doha Round agricultural negotiations. As the most completenegotiation copywriting so far, the Draft Modalities is the most important negotiationcopywriting for guiding and restricting the future development trend of China'sagricultural subsidy. The Draft Modalities further makes clear about the reformdirection of the trade liberation pushed by the Doha Round negotiations and maintainsthat the trade liberation will bring more interests for each member country,encourages each member to participate in the negotiations actively, eliminates barriers,breaks the deadlock, maintenances the fair,free and transparent system of theinternational agricultural products trade and tries to reach a consensus as soon aspossible and signs a new round of multilateral agricultural agreement(MAT).Domestic support measures are not only the core issue of Doha Round agriculturalnegotiations but also are the negotiating content which has the closest relationshipwith China.This paper will continue to analyze the future trend of China's agriculturalsubsidy combined with the latest achievements of Doha Round agriculturalnegotiations. The Doha Round negotiations broke the ice in December2013Baliconference after13years of hard works. The success of Doha Round agriculturalnegotiations will have an actual and profound effect on the agricultural subsidysystem of each WTO member and play an essential role in reinvigorating the globalagricultural product trade and increasing the consumer confidence. The BaliConference passed the Declaration of Bali Minister and achieved the consensus of a“package”, known as “Bid to Harvest”. China's overall position and goal in the DohaRound agricultural negotiations is to “clarify and improve the rules, tightened thedisciplines and prevent abuses”, deeply involved in the whole negotiation process andthe rule-making process. This paper discusses the main issues that China's agricultural subsidy faces comprehensively. On the basis of analyzing the restricting factors of theproblems, it puts forward many suggestions in the end by drawing on the advancedexperiences of developed countries and combining the new progress of Doha Roundagricultural negotiations, focusing on the general objective and assignment “guaranteethe supply, increase the income, benefit people's livelihood and add the vitality byreforming and innovation” of China's agricultural subsidy under the framework ofWTO rules with the direction of “four synchronous modernization”.