Legal Researches On Chinese Foreign Distance Education Under The Context Of GATS

China joined in the WTO in year2001and then made the promises to open the education market. With the rapid development of information technology, distance education as a segment of trade in educational service has been showing a prosperous trend. Many countries are willing to take the initiative in seeking more opportunities, rather than just supplying cross-border distance educational service passively in their own countries, which will have certain impact on the market of distance education in China. During the decade after the accession to the WTO, China has continuously made and perfected the relevant domestic regulations, which is not only the effort to fulfill the obligations of Chinese specific commitments in GATS, but a barrier built to protect the market of educational service in China. Therefore, this text aims at proposing suggestions on perfecting the legal system of foreign distance education from four parts by combining the specific commitments China has made in GATS and the law concerning foreign distance education being implemented now.The first part is to explain the inevitability of foreign distance education in China by introducing the worldwide development of distance education and the current condition of it in China.The second part is to define the conception of foreign distance education in this text and combine specific examples to place it into four categories:cross-border distance education, setting up an overseas institution for distance education, international cooperation projects of distance education and foreign direct investment. Then according to the definition of international trade in services in GATS, analyze these categories and identify their modes of service supply separately. The conclusion is that cross-border distance education and international cooperation projects of distance education are cross-border supply, and setting up an overseas institution for distance education and foreign direct investment are commercial presence. And then analyze the characters of foreign distance education.The third part is the focus of this text, which analyzes relevant regulations of Chinese foreign distance education from the view of international law and domestic law and then propounds the problems of the law concerning foreign distance education being implemented now. The international law is mainly about GATS, Chinese specific commitments and the GATS principles that the domestic legislation should comply with:transparency, domestic regulation and most-favored-nation treatment. The part of domestic law is to analyze these regulations which influent the development of Chinese foreign distance education from four levels of the law, the State Council administrative regulations, departmental rules and other normative documents, including Education Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Promotion of Privately-Run Schools, Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools, Interim Measures for the Administration of the School and the Education Website and one discriminatory measure of academic qualification. Finally, combining the characters of foreign distance education, analyze whether these regulations are applicable to foreign distance education and the difference from other trade in educational services.The fourth part includes three aspects:first one is to propose basic the principles of legislation of foreign distance education:GATS, comprehensive legislation, international cooperation. Second one is to make suggestion to perfect the legal system of Chinese foreign distance education. At last, the third one is to give own perspective about the opening of the distance education market and the adoption of emergency safeguard measures for the purpose of making more perfect rules in the further negotiation of GATS.