Research On The Legal Issues Of The Regional Customs Clearance Integration

Trade Facilitation Agreement is the first multilateral trade agreement that China participates in and reaches after the entry into the World Trade Organization and it is the most important breakthrough that has been realized since the launch of the Doha Round. It mainly includes three parts, namely, the members’ substantive obligations in terms of trade facilitation, some differential of treatment of developing members and least developed countries and the arrangement of institutions. Trade facilitation issues aims at eliminating the border barriers to cross- border flow of goods in the international trade and mainly target at the customs clearance system; its core is customs facilitation.China had formally accepted Trade Facilitation Agreement on September 4, 2015. According to foreign commitments of China, China should implement most of the measures when they take effect, but China still has not fully implemented some measures such as a single window and customs cooperation. In order to comply with the agreement, China’s Customs has gradually introduced a variety of facilitation measures such as paperless customs clearance reform and electronic port in recent years; at the end of 2014, the customs implemented regional customs clearance integration reform, combined the implementation of Trade Facilitation Agreement with port modernization reform process in China, which improved the management level of the customs and administrative efficiency and created convenient and efficient customs clearance environment. The integration of regional customs clearance is the centralized reflection of trade facilitation in China and fruitful results have been achieved. However, at the beginning of the customs clearance integration mode, there are still all sorts of practical problems(including bad customs clearance efficiency, the relative shortage of resource management, and widespread conflicting policies from different departments) that make it fail to meet the requirements of trade facilitation. Base on the requirements of trade facilitation, the thesis focuses on the exploration of the legal obstacle problems of the customs clearance integration, and tries to find solutions to the legal barriers.In the thesis, Chapter one reviews the background and the negotiating process of trade facilitation issues, and sums up the current mainstream views of principles and connotations of trade facilitation. Chapter two explains the trade facilitation process of China’s customs, including the preparatory work of China’s customs for the implementation of trade facilitation agreements, as well as the achievements that China’s customs has obtained in the field of trade facilitation. Chapter three focuses on the reform contents of the integration of regional customs clearance, compares the requirements of trade facilitation and concludes that the integration reform of customs regional customs clearance is the concentrated expression of trade facilitation in China. Chapter four analyzes the legal obstacles of the integration of regional customs clearance from the aspects of legislation, legal coordination and law enforcement. Chapter five states the innovation on foreign customs clearance business, and extracts better regional customs clearance integration part that is and worth learning for China’s customs after comparing with the current customs clearance situation in china. Chapter six emphatically discusses the solutions to the legal obstacles in the process of regional customs clearance integration by combining with the grassroots customs work experience of the author.