Study Of Non-discriminatory Treatment Of State Trading Enterprises

As the primary substantial obligation of the state trading enterprises (STEs), the non-discrimination principle has not attracted the attention it deserves. First of all, the non-discriminatory principle has the close relation with the development of the system of STEs as a whole. Secondly, this issue has being under discussion because of the uncertainty of the relevant rules in WTO and the conflicting practices in deferent counties. Accordingly, the present thesis was designed to deal with the discussions about the non-discriminatory principle of STEs by systematical analyses from the perspectives of history, rule-making, case decisions and jurisprudence; and in the light of the detailed analyses, the thesis was ended with the prediction of the trends for the non-discriminatory principle of STEs and the countermeasures for Chinese legislation and legal practices.This thesis is nearly 40 thousand characters and composed of 4 parts except for the Introduction.The first part is the general remark of STEs which aimed at bringing out the theme of the study. At first, in respect that there is no consensus on the concept and characters of STEs, which is the basis for the study of the non-discriminatory principle of STEs, the author tried her best to determine the nature of STEs according to the relevant rule-making history and the present rules. After the introduction of the history about the establishment of STEs, the non-discriminatory principle of STEs was put into discussion.The second part made an analysis of non-discriminatory rules in GATT/WTO, with the discussion of most-favored national treatment, national treatment, and the relevant rules on commercial consideration thereof respectively. Moreover, this part made a comparison between the non-discriminatory principle of STEs in GATT and GATS and constrained the studying scope within the fields of goods and services trading.The third part introduced several major attitudes toward state trading system, including US, EU, Canada and Russia, and made evaluation of them one by one. Generally speaking, US and EU hold the negative attitude toward STEs, and required severe application of the non-discrimination treatment to STEs. On the other side, Canada and Russia hold the positive attitude toward STEs for these two countries utilized STEs regularly. Even though Russia has not been the member of WTO yet, it sought the access to WTO actively. Most of all, Russia has the similarity with China in economic system, especially the state trading system. So it is necessary to introduce the attitude of Russia. Here the author wants to express in particular that this part did not set forth the Chinese position of STEs considering that the special argumentation on the relevant problems of STEs in China would be worked out in the last part of this thesis.The forth part, "the prospect of the non-discriminatory treatment of STEs in WTO and the countermeasures for China", should be the keystone as well as the difficult part of the thesis. At the beginning, this part focused on the changing development of the rules on STEs and the non-discrimination treatment of STEs under WTO. After historical and demonstrative augmentation, the author took upon herself to predict that the StiEs would finally be subject to the competition law with the severe application of non-discriminatory treatment to STEs in advance. Then, with regard to the concrete situations of China, the author analyzed the significance of STEs to China and introduced the present rules upon STEs as well as the non-discrimination principle of STEs. At last, the author put forward the legal countermeasures for China: firstly, making the best of the present incompleteness of the relevant rules in WTO in order to buy time to perfect Chinese relevant legislation; secondly, holding any opportunity to reform the system of STEs and establish the system of competition law so as to make the Chinese legislation and legal practices consistent with the trends of international development; the last but not the least, participating in the practices of WTO actively and making use of the negotiation platform and dispute settlement mechanism offered by WTO, in order to maintain Chinese legal rights in respect of the affairs correlated with state trading.