On August 21, 2021, the second internal seminar of Network on International Trade and Investment System (NITIS) was successfully held online. The seminar, themed "WTO Subsidy Regulation Reform and China's Response", invited Professor Yang Rongzhen at CIWTO to give a keynote speech, and Xu Chengjin, Associate Researcher from the Center for International Economic and Technical Cooperation of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and Ding Ru, Associate Professor at the School of International Law of China University of Political Science and Law, were invited as guest commenters. We were also honored to have leading experts from the Ministry of Commerce and the Chinese Permanent Mission to the WTO participating in the online discussion. More than 60 experts and scholars had an in-depth exchange of views on the reform of WTO subsidy rules, the main stances of member countries, the negotiation path and China's responding strategies.

The conference was presided by Yi Xiaozhun, General Counsel of NITIS, former Chinese Ambassador to the WTO and former Deputy Director-General of the WTO. Ambassador Yi said that the reform of subsidy rules is one of the most important issues in WTO reform and the focus of debate among all WTO members, and the academic discussion on the reform of WTO subsidy rules has important practical significance and academic value.

After that, Prof. Yang Rongzhen gave a keynote speech on "WTO Subsidy Rule Reform and China's Response". She pointed out that the issue of subsidies has a historical continuity. Since the 1990s, China has been one of the countries with the largest number of anti-dumping lawsuits in the world; since 2004, China has experienced an increasing number of countervailing lawsuits. In recent years, the issue of subsidies has attracted much attention and is the focus of WTO reform. From 2017 to 2020, the United States, Europe and Japan issued seven joint statements, basically unified the position of subsidy rule reform, and for the next step, they may start subsidy rule negotiations in a plurilateral manner, to which China needs to pay close attention and actively respond to it. Based on this, Prof. Yang Rongzhen shared her team's research findings about propositions of different members in the reform of WTO subsidy rules, the review of subsidy policies of the United States and the European Union, China's situation and response, etc., to provide countermeasures and suggestions for China to deal with the new subsidy rule negotiations promoted by the US, Europe and Japan.

Associate Research Fellow Xu Chengjin spoke highly of the research of Professor Yang Rongzhen and her team, and expressed his views on whether there are "harmful subsidies" in the US, Europe and Japan, how to deal with the plurilateral negotiations on subsidies that may be initiated by the US, Europe and Japan, and how to balance the relationship between China's domestic subsidy policy and the development of international rules. Associate Professor Ding Ru’s comments and discussions are focused on "public institutions" and "external benchmarks". She said that "public institution" and "external benchmark" are both important concepts in the countervailing investigation. Some WTO members have generalized the concept of "public institution" and abused the principle of "external benchmark" in the countervailing investigation practice in their own regions, which has resulted in the abuse of countervailing measures on Chinese products. Therefore, apart from actively speaking up on the subsidy rules, we also need to actively promote multilateral rules to effectively restrict the abuse of unilateral countervailing measures.

Translator: HU Zhejun

Reviewer: WANG Yu