Measuring The Sector Restriction Degree Of The U.S. FTA Negative List And Its Enlightenment To China

In recent years,the negative list mode has been adopted in more and more regional trade and investment agreements.As an essential part of new high-standard and high-qualified trade and investment rules,negative list mode has become an important threshold for countries to integrating into the global economy and therefore affect the global value chains specialization and trade benefit distribution.Confronting with the above situation,China has been actively carrying out the bilateral investment treatment negotiation while launched the negative list management system of foreign investment in the pilot free trade zones of China.Therefore,an overall research on the negative list of other countries is significant for China.However,text message scattered in negative lists fails to provide with enough data for statistical disposition and then limits related researches.In order to break through the data bottleneck,this paper investigates the 14 free trade agreements the United States has signed and conducts integrated and overall analysis of the involved 18 negative lists.Based on the two-digit code of International Standards of Industry Classification(ISIC 4.0),this paper classifies the industry limit scope of the negative list of each country and afterwards conducts quantitative analysis to the limited degree of each involve field in the negative lists according to the specific descriptions of each sector.Moreover,the paper calculates the accumulated limited degree of each industry and conducts overall analysis on the limited scope and restricted degree of the United States and the countries signing the free trade agreements with it,and then compares with the negative list of China pilot free trade areas so as to offer political suggestion to China negative list system and the negotiation of bilateral investment treatment between the United States and China.The paper finds that the involved industries of different countries vary,with the third industry as the essential part.Generally,the top three industries are transportation industries,finances,fish industry and professional services,mainly on attorneys and account.The second industry is seldom involved.Comparing with the negative lists of the United States and countries signing FTA with it,China involves more industries and more serious restrictions than the United States.However,China has generally the same limited scope than the average yet the much more limited degree than other countries.According with the above situation,China should simplify the negative list,prefect the law system and enrich the negotiation mode.