The Improvement Of Laws On Exportation Restrictions On Non-renewable Natural Resources

Natural resources are key factors in promoting the development of the world, and the competition for natural resources is getting severe, especially for those non-renewable natural resources.Previously, the conflicts of trade were mainly about import control, while nowadays the member states of World Trade Organization are launching a “battle”on the natural resource export restrictions.On June 2009 and August 2009, the United States, the European Union and Mexico appealed to the World Trade Organization(WTO) respectively on the Chinese export restrictions on certain raw materials.For the same token, the United States, the European Union and Japan filed a lawsuit to the World Trade Organization(WTO) Dispute Settlement Body on Chinese export restrictions on rare earth,tungsten, molybdenum on March 13,2012. They accused that these restrictions were against the WTO rules and the commitments made when China affiliated to the WTO. China lost these two cases, and was forced to cancel the export quotas and tariffs on raw materials and rare earth. Why China lost these two cases, and what lesson we can learn from them? In other words, how can we manage the non-renewable resources efficiently and at the same time avoid losing law cases in the future? This is a practical problem that should be solved quickly by the Chinese foreign trade administration. From domestic laws and WTO rules’ prospective, this article attempts to analyze these two cases and tries to review the shortcomings of export administration on non-renewable resources, and sees what we can learn from them.This thesis includes introduction, body and conclusion, and there are four chapters in the body part. The first chapter defines the non-renewable resources, and highlights the importance of the non-renewable resources for the economic growth, technological development and political stability for a country. They are of importance, thus, it is crucial to scientifically administrate them. In this chapter, the author is trying to analyze the current administration laws for these non-renewable resources and how the administration laws work.In the second chapter, the author describes disputes in these two cases in order analyze the validity of administration laws internationally.The third chapter begins with the cases of the raw materials and the rare earth, analyzing the dilemma and challenges that the restrictions laws on the non-renewable resource is confronting, and looks for the problems in these restrictions to find a way to solve these problems. The author is trying to analyze the usage of the WTO rules and examine the validity of domestic export laws.The chapter four brings forward solutions for administration of the non-renewable resources problems, namely, to modify the domestic export laws to comply with the WTO rules and to strive for Chinese benefits through modifying and interpreting WTO terms.