Research On The Degree Of Freedom Of Trade Agreement Between China And Developed Countries

With the deepening of international trade development,free trade negotiations under the traditional multilateral system have become increasingly unable to adapt to the new environment of international trade,which has prompted countries to rely on bilateral or multilateral regional trade liberalization negotiations to reach a wider coverage and higher level of trade agreement.In recent years,China has also recognized the importance of this trend,and has actively signed a series of bilateral free trade agreements with other countries.The construction of regional trade liberalization has begun to take shape.Among them,developed countries have huge trade potential with China due to factors such as huge economic aggregation,advanced industrial structure and excellent business environment.Signing bilateral free trade agreements with more developed countries is more important for China's future economic development and has long-term practical significance.Therefore,a thorough study of China's current free trade agreement signed with developed countries,to understand its advantages and shortcomings will help us to gain a deeper understand for the meaning of the FTA,and also provide policy advice for the negotiation and signing of more free trade agreements in the future.In view of this,this article first outlines the overall development of China's FTA,introduces the FTA that China has signed,is negotiating and is studying.Then we choose China's free trade agreements with Singapore,Australia,Switzerland and South Korea as the research objects for quantitative analysis on the basis of their features of economic development.Secondly,on the basis of reviewing and summarizing the relevant literatures on the quantitative analysis of trade agreement provisions,this paper uses the APEC Free Trade Agreement "topic-terms-core requirements" three-level classification framework to construct a three-dimensional indicator system,including the coverage index,the breadth index and the depth index,to quantify the agreement.The analysis of the agreement's overall coverage index shows that the agreement has achieved a relatively complete coverage of the free trade issues,and the FTAs signed with different countries differ in the specific issues involved.The analysis of the breadth index and the depth index of the agreement as a whole shows that the breadth index and the depth index of the agreement as a whole are significantly lower than the coverage index,reflecting that the agreement is still very large at room for improvement on the "terms" level and the "core requirements"level.Further,the analysis of the depth index and the breadth index of specific topics shows that the breadth index of the same topic is generally larger than the depth index,which reflects that China tends to prior:itize the coverage of the terms in the FTA negotiations and then consider the agreement's executability;vertical comparison of different topics,traditional topics including market access,rules of origin,customs procedures,sanitary and plant inspection and quarantine,technical barriers to trade,trade remedies and dispute settlement are better at breadth index than new field topics including government procurement,investment,cross-border service trade,competition policy,intellectual property,labor,environment,e-commerce,cooperation and transparency,the latter is better than the former in terms of depth index,reflecting China's More pragmatic features in the negotiation of new field issues.Subsequently,the paper goes deeper into the core requirements level and analyzes the distribution of the core requirements of the agreement.The results show that the text of the agreement can basically achieve a certain substantive commitment within the traditional domain issues,ensuring the enforceability of the agreement in these areas.The reason why the depth index is low is because there are too many core requirements under each clause,and it is difficult to reach a larger consensus within a limited negotiation time.The situation in the new field is more complicated.Except for the labor and government procurement issues that are not covered by all the agreements,the core requirements in the key clauses are well covered only on the cross-border service trade issues,thus achieving a higher degree of freedom level.Competition policy and environmental issues,although with good index performance,do not cover the core requirements of substantive commitments,but only cover some symbolic terms,so the agreement is not enforceable on these two issues.The agreement contains certain key elements in the areas of investment,intellectual property,e-commerce,cooperation and transparency,but once it comes to legal regulation,it is often blank.The formulation of standards for new field issues is usually led by developed countries and presents high standards in terms of legal regulation.This makes it more difficult for China to conduct effective negotiations with developed countries in the context of relevant domestic laws and regulations.Eventually weakened the enforceability of the agreement on new issues.Finally,based on the above conclusions,this paper argues that China should actively evaluate low-degree-of-freedom issues in the future free trade negotiations with developed countries,clarify China's core interests,and focus on improving the depth of traditional trade issues and accelerate domestic correlation on laws and regulations with international standards.In addition,China should also conduct free trade negotiations according to the characteristics of the country's economy,and at the same time take the initiative to attack in the negotiations,maximize the interests of the country,so that the signing and implementation of the agreement truly become an inexhaustible source of China's future economic development.