PREFACE

With China's accession to the WTO on December 11,2001, WTO law is becoming more and more important for China, especially for businesspersons, legal counsels or civil servants. For undergraduates in China, in particular for those major in economics or in law, it is definitely necessary to understand the WTO legal system at least in general sense. For some international trade-oriented majors, an in-depth study may be needed. So, what's the best way to learn the WTO law？

Till now, almost all the textbooks for undergraduates or postgraduates published in China concerning the introduction of the WTO law were written in Chinese, and the teachers so were teaching WTO law in Chinese. Under this condition it is difficult for the Chinese college students to grasp the true meaning of this legal system and to improve their abilities of analyzing and solving practical problems arising from the explanation of the provisions of the WTO document.

To learn WTO law under English environment is difficult, but necessary. The reasons for that include:all the official documents are published or issued in English, Spanish or French, mostly probably the original version is English; the working language at most time is English; sometimes the ambiguity of Chinese version of legal document can be avoided by comparing it with English version, and vice versa.

To teach the WTO law in bilingual environment may be the best way to make Chinese college students understand the system better and quicker. In this way, the students could know the original and commonly used nomenclature and concepts in WTO law both in English and in Chinese. This may help them to understand these terms and concepts better and reduce the difficulty in the learning, because the WTO legal system is far different from Chinese legal system in that it has developed under foreign language（mainly English） environment. In the mean time, they can improve their English skills which are very important in their future careers. But, among other things, good bilingual textbook is a prerequisite condition for the success of a bilingual course. As one of criteria for good book, it should meet the demands and conditions of the Chinese college students. But unfortunately we have not found this kind of textbook in the list of public publications in china till now.

The author believes we should do something for the learning of WTO law in China. The cut-in point we have chosen is to provide a bilingual textbook which, because of its selection and reorganization by Chinese authors, should be fit for Chinese students to understand easily while without prejudice of its accuracy of original language.

This bilingual book includes 8 chapters. The first chapter outlines the main features of the WTO; chapter 2, chapter 3 introduces the relatively full-developed legal system concerning trade in goods; chapter 4, chapter 5 deal with rules concerning trade in service and trips respectively; the chapter 6 and chapter 7 are the introduction to the procedural regulations of dispute settlement and trade policy review, in which the DSU are stressed in order to be compatible with our objectives which mainly are to raise the ability to know the procedural rules of dispute settlement well in practice and to overcome the special difficulties; chapter 8 provides a relatively detailed introduction of the Panel report entitled“China-Measures affecting imports of automobile parts”, which issued by DSB on 18 July 2008, and a brief introduction of the case. This case is the first one that has almost gone through the whole procedures of WTO dispute settlement procedures.

Compared with full English version ones, the main advantage of this bilingual book is that, not only it is written in pure English, but also it has a number of notes and translations to explain the special difficult issues or jargons. Those sentences we think difficult to understand will be underlined and given a Chinese translation for reference. This would have great help in understanding the relevant WTO concepts or theories, which seemed very difficult for the beginning learner. In order to make it easier for readers to understand the text, an introductory preamble in Chinese is embedded ahead of the main text in every chapter.

This book is expected to be used in the bilingual courses, which are necessary for schools of higher learning here in China. Because English can be regarded as common language in international communication, it's almost impossible for international practitioners to deal with real problems arising from international trade without knowing general English terms in trade law. This book is also suitable for readers like would-be international traders, administrative officers, etc. who need to know WTO in their work.

Some materials in this book are selected from or reference to WTO or UN unrestrictive public documents. Here I sincerely appreciate the help they have provided.

Trying to do something for the improvement of WTO education in China, the Author regards this book just as an experiment or precursor. The difficulty of compiling the textbook is enormous, I just do my best to avoid mistakes, but we cannot make sure it is perfect; therefore, the authors sincerely welcome and appreciate any opinions or comments on this book.