At the invitation of China Institute for WTO studies,Ms. Rohini Acharya,the counselor from the regional trade agreements office in the Secretariat of WTO Trade Policy Division gave us an academic lecture on "Regional integration and the prospect of multilateral trade negotiation".The lecture was hosted by the vice president Tu Xinquanin Conference Room 226 at the Administration Building on May 9, 2014.Professor Zhao Longyue from Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Associate Professor Fan Ying from School of International Economics and Trade, Deputy Dean of China Institute for WTO studies Tu Xinquan, associate researcher Li Yang,  Faculty  Sun Na and Dai Zhen , Law school graduates and postgraduates of our college attended the lecture.

Acharya gave us a global landscape overlooking of today's RTAs from the trend of regional trade agreements, the development of RTAs have gradually moved towards the bilateral and are often concluded between developed countries or developed and developing countries. Acharya focused on the overlapping RTAs issues between the members of the Asia-Pacific and advantages of the multilateral trading system( MTs ) over RTAs.She also explained the reasons for the growing RTAs ,  the interaction and potential synergistic effect between RTAs and  MTs. Ms. Acharya further analyzed the potential systemic risks in the form of deeper integration system .

Finally, Acharya portrayed the prospects of multilateral negotiations. After Bali conference, WTO has indeed been progressing in the negotiations. TPP breaks the traditional multilateral negotiations and brings about a serious of effects to negotiations on WTO multilateral negotiations .  This academic report not only gives us insight about the latest developments in RTAs, but also leads us to deeper thinking on this topic. （By Zhou Wenchan，Liu bo and Yue Lu）