China's Climate Trade Law Research

Climate change affects comparative advantage of international trade. Therefore, italso affects mode and structure of international trade. On the other hand, internationaltrade affects climate change through the scale effect, structure effect and technologyeffect of trade as well.After endless turns and twists of both negotiation and development, theinternational legislation for climate trade now can see some juicy fruits hanging on thetree. They are a series of international documents which are based upon United NationsFramework Convention and Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile, those domestic legislationsare gradually going to be complete, such as the European Carbon Tax System and theU.S. Carbon Tariff System. However, when talking about China, it still has a long wayto go. For instance, China does not have a complete climate trade domestic legislation.At the same time, those related normative documents have a low legal hierarchy, whichare also a little bit scattered. Moreover, dealing with carbon tariff disputes betweenChina and developed countires, China is lacking in practitioners who are familiar withInternational Public Law and other foreign related legal issues, as well as be lacking ineffective response mechanism. Therefore, it is crucial for the Chinese legal practicefield to reinforece study of climate trade leagl issues, and to foster related practitionersat the same time.The first part of the thesis discused the relationship between climate change andinternational trade in detail; and elaborated prevailing theories of climate chage such asPigou Theory and Coase Theorem. Based upon those, it defined the definition ofclimate tradeexplicitly.The second part analyzed several international legislations of climate trade such asUnited Nations Framework Convention, Kyoto Protocol, Bali roadmap, CopenhagenAccord and Cancun Agreements. What’s more, it discused important theories andpractical problems related to those legislations.The third part made a depth analysis ofcurrent situation and flaws of China’s current climate trade domestic legislation and measures. On basis of that, this partpointed out that China shall complete climate trade related domestic legislation andcurrent climate trade mechanism, in order to establish a complete a legal system forclimate trade. Meanwhile, this part also pointed out that China shall perform actively inthe creation of the international principles of climate trade, setting up and fosteringrelated organisation and practitioners at the same time.Based upon the current situation of China’s climate trade legislation and relatedmeasures, the last part of this thesis made several systematic suggestions of how toorganize and complete China’s legal system of climate trade. The suggestions includecompleting law system, clean development mechanism, emission right trade mechanism,incentive mechanism of carbon offsets and carbon abatement.