WTO협정에 따른 중국환경법제의 현황과 문제점

Abstract

China’s joining the WTO means that the country will observe the WTO agreement and revamp its environmental laws in accordance with the WTO system. The WTO system specified on its establishment agreement the sustainable development as the main purpose of the optimal use of the world resources, and allowed GATT 1994, Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (TBT), Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS), Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM), Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and GATS provisions to be invoked, and organized Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) within the organization, China has legislated in 1989 Environmental Protection Law and many of the administrative and local laws and regulations in the fields of antipollution, conservation of nature, and relief of natural hazards and finally built an environmental protection system: However, they were established at the early stage of China’s system transition seeking planned socialism commodity economy, which are limited to controlling the environmental pollution-antipollution. Despite its being contrary to WTO principles founded on transparent and fair game rules, revamp of the environmental law field has been in a stalemate after the country’s entry into WTO unlike other fields like trade law, foreign investment laws, and intellectual property law. However, as China recently promotes the transition from economic development first policy in the past to governing a country in accordance with law, the country is seeking to work out a new environmental legislative system that confirms to the WTO system. China’s new environmental legislative system is expanding the scope of regulations that covers from controlling environmental pollution and hazard relief to the use, management, and preservation of environment. We expect the country to break from its past posture of using the WTO’s exceptive clauses and actively participate in establishing and revising the WTO rules based on its raised national prestige as an economic trading power, thereby actively intervening in the international economic trade and environmental protection order.