Textiles and clothing (T&C) trade after lapse of quotas in 2005 has revealed China’s overwhelming comparative advantage in the manufacture and export of T&C products. China’s advantage in this sector attracted the use of trade remedies by WTO members under WTO laws, often in a manner contrary to WTO norms. China has also been subjected to origin-specific safeguard regimes. The EU and the US have been leading users of safeguards against China’s T&C exports. The use of safeguards by the EU and the US raises a number of questions that impact on the future use of trade remedies by other countries. The use of safeguards also poses challenges for the multilateral trading system. This paper analyses the use of safeguards against China’s T&C exports with a view to anticipating the future use of safeguards in the quota-free trading environment for T&C.
Deficiency of the US financial regulation has stimulated the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The fundamental causes of the regulatory deficiency can be categorized as follows: excessively indebted consumption culture in a long term, permanently abolishing the regulation on financial derivatives by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the regulations before the reform not fitting for the fictitious economy. The operation of financial products is like to fly a kite. The financial product is the kite, governmental adjustment is the string, market regulation is the wind, national culture and legislature and judicature are the environment. Those coordinated elements can guarantee a healthy financial market. To construct an effective financial regulatory system in China, it is needed to make culture with Chinese characteristics, advance the coordinated development of governmental and market regulation, and promote financial legislations and related implementation.
Common law traditionally contains the formal rationality of commercial law. According to common law tradition, there is no possibility of preventing commercial law from being formalized. Formalization of commercial law in common law system is an institutional demand of market economy and is jointly promoted by the legal tradition of common law countries. The commercial law in the two legal systems indicates that the commercial law is made depending on the market economy and the form of commercial law is restricted by legal tradition. The formalization and assimilation of commercial law are an internal need as well as an inevitable trend in the course of economic development.
After the Cold War and the quick development of globalization, non-state acts by international organizations, transnational corporations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), etc., are becoming more active. Global issues with regard to, inter alia, environment, human rights, terrorism are constantly emerging, which bring great challenge to the Westphalia System that is based on state sovereignty and centered on the national state. At the same time, the values, which include “individualism” and “global justice,” are constantly casting impact on international legal system. Doubtlessly, in the current context of international relations, “justice among states” is still the reasonable positioning of the value of modern international law. However, making “individualism” and “global justice” compatible and modifying “justice among states” is an inevitable trend. At the same time, the rule brought about by the modification on the value of justice must be handled properly.
As to the development of global competition law, China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML), being considered as a milestone for legalizing the institution of Chinese socialist market economy, has attracted a lot of attention from international communities. To improve the AML, it depends on self-constructing anti-monopoly law and absorbs foreign experiences by way of heated comments on the AML from international society and similar situations of China’s AML to the US Antitrust Law and the EU Competition Law.
The economic recession throughout the history has always been accompanied by relaxation or abandonment of anti-monopoly laws, but this crisis is not experiencing substantive recession of anti-monopoly law enforcement in major countries and regions. This has mainly resulted from the recognition that anti-monopoly law enforcement could ease adverse effects of economic recovery. Considering China’s short history of anti-monopoly law enforcement and consistent tradition of government intervention in the economy, more strict anti-monopoly law enforcement should be adopted, and more attention should be paid to government-led anti-competitive efforts.
This paper analyzes the origin of Chinese legalism, its major propositions and characteristics. It compares the difference between Chinese legalism and other Chinese philosophies including Confucianism, Taoism and Mohism. It also discloses the difference of Chinese legalism and Western legalism in relation with morality. Western legalism defended the rule-of-law but argued against the morality of law. In contrast, Chinese legalism, especially in the early Pre-Qin era, did not separate morality from law. However, the fidelity to law in Chinese legalism was interpreted as the fidelity to the monarch, and thus being different from the Western rule-of-law.
On July 23, 2007, the Supreme Court of China issued a new judicial interpretation on contractual conflicts. By this Interpretation, the Supreme Court of China publicized contractual conflicts rules. Although a new legal system has been established in resolving conflict of laws in accord with the Law on the Application of Law in Foreign-Related Civil Relations in China (effective on April 1, 2011), there are not many detailed rules concerned on contractual choice of law in this law. As far as contractual conflicts are concerned, the new rules just re-confirm the principles embedded in the 2007 Interpretation. In China contractual conflict disputes still have to largely resort to the 2007 Interpretation.