| With the gradual deepening of economic globalization,countries in the world have further cooperation demands in the field of transnational coordination of technical trade measures on the basis of WTO coordination rules.Under this demand orientation,the coordination rules of technical trade measures have been generally upgraded worldwide in recent years,which is reflected in the following aspects: first,at the normative source level of transnational cooperation of technical trade measures,regional coordination rules have gradually covered the multilateral coordination rules under the WTO system with a higher standard cooperation mode.Countries with the same demand for openness rely on the TBT provisions in regional trade agreements to coordinate various standardization requirements in goods trade.Second,the scope of coordination on technical trade measures has been gradually expanded.The object of coordination no longer focuses on technical regulations,but extends the focus to standards and conformity assessment procedures.China is committed to elevating standard international economic and trade rules in the field of standardization and promoting high-quality development through high-level opening-up.In this context,China formally joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement(RCEP)and applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership(CPTPP).In order to realize our country technical trade measure and the related rule comprehensive upgrade.However,signing high standard regional trade agreements and trying to pursue higher level of economic and trade rules does not mean that our country’s reform in the field of technical trade measures has been completed successfully.To some extent,the formal entry into force of the treaty rules is only the beginning of this TBT reform.What really determines the effectiveness of the reform is whether the whole standardization system behind the text rules is perfectly compatible with RTA rules and operates stably according to its planning.In order to determine this point,it is necessary not only to clarify the order that regional coordination rules try to shape,but also to examine the domestic implementation of obligations in RTA and the implementation of various cooperation mechanisms established with other parties in accordance with the initiative provisions of RTA at the actual level.Unfortunately,the feedback in practice seems to be unsatisfactory.First of all,from the perspective of the number of TBT notifications,the RCEP did not bring about smoother information exchange of technical trade measures as expected to eliminate information barriers within one year after its official entry into force.Secondly,as the most important regional technology and trade cooperation mechanism in regional coordination rules,the construction may completely stagnate or be tangible without substance.These cooperation mechanisms are often proposed in the form of initiative clauses,and although they do not require mandatory implementation,their implementation status determines the upper limit of regional TBT cooperation.Based on the current implementation status,it can be said that the potential of RTA agreements has not been fully realized.Finally,the integration of regional coordination rules with China’s domestic standardization system has not been perfect,and there are still potential compatibility issues between treaty rules and domestic legal rules at the legal level.The openness requirements of treaties at the administrative level are higher than the level of openness that China can bear at the current stage of standardization development,and there is a disconnect between guiding rules and objective reality.Under the comprehensive influence of these factors,the coordination rules of regional technical trade measures have not been fully and effectively implemented,and eliminating these implementation obstacles is the problem that this article attempts to solve.The reasons for this situation are manifold.First,the regional coordination rules themselves have certain limitations.Taking RCEP as an example,RCEP has a large number of member countries with different levels of development,and each party has different degrees of regional TBT cooperation they expect to achieve and standardization and openness they can carry.That is,the main way is to build a regional cooperation framework to coordinate TBT differences rather than establish regional consistent entity rules to eliminate TBT differences.The inevitable result of strong framework and weak binding orientation is that treaty rules are easy to reach consensus at the legal level but difficult to be well implemented in practice.Second,there is insufficient consultation and cooperation among RTA parties in the region.This is the result of both subjective and objective factors.At the subjective level,the lack of mutual trust between the parties leads to a weak willingness to cooperate.In terms of the choice of cooperation path within the framework of RTA cooperation,most of the contracting parties do not prefer to choose the deep cooperation mode such as supplementary treaties due to various factors.At the objective level,the differences in standardization systems adopted by different countries have fundamental obstacles that are difficult to be coordinated according to RTA rules,such as different adoption modes of technical regulations,different standard systems and grading systems,and different domestic laws and regulations used to regulate the same TBT measures.These factors together lead to the establishment of regional technical trade measures cooperation mechanism has always been in a superficial state.Third,regional coordination rules and domestic norms in our country have not been well integrated.At the legal level,there are still problems that laws and regulations should be due but not inconsistent with internal and external.The former,for example,there is lack of legal confirmation of the principle of national treatment that should be given to natural persons or legal persons of other contracting states participating in standardization activities and qualification determination of conformity assessment institutions in our country according to regional coordination rules.For example,there are conflicts between the current domestic laws and RTA regulations in our country regarding whether the supervision of conformity assessment bodies should comply with the territoriality principle.All these problems need to be properly solved.In addition,the implementation of regional coordination rules also requires overall coordination with China’s standardized administrative system.In this regard,there are still many problems caused by the lag in the development stage of standardization construction compared to treaty requirements,such as the imperfect mechanism for integrating TBT information,and the language barrier of standard information has not been cleared.In order to solve these problems,the measures our country should take include effectively using the legal rights given by the regional coordination rules,actively promoting the cooperation mechanism of various regional technical trade measures,systematically optimizing the foreign-related clauses in the standardization laws and regulations of our country.The vitality of law lies in its implementation,and whether treaty rules can be effectively implemented within a country’s territory not only depends on the rules themselves,but also on the practical environment they apply to.Establishing a more inclusive and open domestic standardization system to break through various hidden barriers is precisely to shape an ideal environment that can enable regional coordination rules to operate without obstacles.The research on regional coordination rules of technical trade measures is of great practical significance in the current economic and trade environment.According to statistical data,the total surplus of China’s goods trade in 2022 is 668.6 billion US dollars,ranking first in the world and much higher than that of other countries.This means that almost all the world’s non-energy exporters are in a trade deficit with China in goods trade.Whether out of political influence or trade balance considerations,other countries are trying to take various effective measures to reduce their trade dependence on China,and some countries have taken action.Among these measures,adjusting the industrial structure for industrial upgrading is not an immediate thing,and raising tariff barriers to China to reduce the trade deficit is ineffective and prone to reciprocal retaliation.As an implicit and reasonable non-tariff measure,technical trade measures have a tendency to return to barriers once again.From our country’s perspective,we should actively utilize various coordination and cooperation mechanisms of technical trade measures to "turn shields into spears" and promote the free flow of trade.By introducing high standard regional coordination rules,we aim to create a high-level open standardization system in China,thereby driving the de-barrier development of global technological trade measures.To achieve continuous progress from absorbing rules to transforming rules,and then to leading rules,and shape a more open and fair international standardized order. |
