Chapter 681: Claim XII

5. The principle of economic development, also known as the principle of encouraging economic development and economic reform, is formulated for the purpose of helping and promoting the rapid economic development of developing countries, and is a special preferential treatment given to these countries, such as allowing developing countries to implement import quantity restrictions or increase tariffs within a certain range of "political assistance to economic development" clauses, which only require developed countries to unilaterally assume obligations and developing countries to enjoy certain specific preferential treatment free of charge", and established the legitimacy of the longer transitional treatment and GSP treatment granted by developed countries to developing countries and countries in transition. The principle of non-discrimination 'sex'.

This principle has two aspects, one is most-favoured-nation treatment and the other is national treatment. Members generally cannot discriminate among trading partners; This is the most-favoured-nation treatment. This principle is so important that it is the first article of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which governs trade in goods, the second article of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the fourth article of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Thus, MFN treatment applies to all three areas of WTO trade.

National treatment refers to the treatment of goods, services and intellectual property rights in a foreign country on an equal footing with those of a foreign country. The fundamental purpose of MFN treatment is to ensure that Parties other than their own countries are able to compete fairly with enterprises of other countries in their own markets on equal terms. The principle of non-discrimination is the cornerstone of the World Trade Organization, an important means to avoid trade discrimination and friction, and an important guarantee for achieving equal trade among countries.

Judging from the overall structure and various principles of the WTO, it is extremely beneficial to the development of developing countries, and the history of the GATT and the WTO fully shows that the benefits brought by multilateral trade liberalization to a certain member are far greater than the benefits of a country's unilateral implementation of trade liberalization.

This is because when a country unilaterally and autonomously decides to liberalize trade in goods and liberalize its services market, the benefits to be obtained depend mainly on the response of other trading partners to such liberalization reforms. Conversely, under the WTO system, since a member's trade liberalization is carried out within the context of obtaining the open market commitments of existing members, it is natural that the actual benefits of such trade liberalization reforms are guaranteed by the WTO mechanism, rather than the uncertainties of unilateral or bilateral trade liberalization benefits.

As a result, multilateral trade liberalization is preferable to unilateral trade liberalization, especially in a large developing country like China. Moreover, in Yao Yi's previous life, in the early 20th century, after China's accession to the WTO, the rapid economic development became the world's factory in just ten years, and that kind of achievement was almost incredible.

However, the current situation is different from the situation in which China joined the WTO at that time; under the present circumstances, because the US economy occupies an absolute hegemonic position in the world, if we say that militarily, the Soviet Union can fight with the United States, but economically, there is absolutely no way to compete with the United States for strength, so economically, the United States, by virtue of its own economic strength, can be said to have the absolute right to speak.

It is precisely because of this that the United States controls not only the United Nations politically, but also the United Nations economically---- GATT became known as the WTO after 1995. In the political United Nations, the Soviet Union could also compete with it, involving the power of the United States, but in the economic United Nations, the United States was completely in control.

With regard to the establishment of the WTO, what the world may not expect is that the United States is the biggest stumbling block, and the history of the establishment of the WTO is roughly as follows:

The idea of establishing the WTO was put forward at the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, when the establishment of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund was envisaged at the same time as the establishment of an international 'sexual' trade organization, thus making them the "monetary-financial-trade" triad that dominated the world economy after World War II.

In 1947, the Havana Charter, signed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment, agreed to establish the WTO, but the WTO was not established due to opposition from the United States.

In the same year, the United States initiated the drafting of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as a temporary compact to promote trade liberalization. After the launch of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations in 1986, the European Community and Canada formally proposed the establishment of the WTO in 1990, and the GATT Ministerial Conference held in Marrakesh, Morocco, in April 1994, formally decided to establish the WTO.

From this history, we can fully imagine why the Americans opposed the establishment of the WTO, and at the same time, why they themselves initiated the drafting of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as a temporary contract to promote trade liberalization, which involved economic competition between the United States and Europe.

As Europe at that time, it was in urgent need of economic development after the war, but the destruction brought by the war caused their domestic consumption power to shrink and decline, and at this time, the United States on the other side of the ocean was very rich, with talents, and the European productivity with technology could be quickly restored, but the domestic consumption power naturally could not be quickly recovered, so they looked at the huge consumer market of the United States.

However, the Americans knew that if the WTO had been established at that time, their domestic industry would have been affected by Europe, especially since Europe had extremely cheap human resources and very competitive products after the war, so the Americans rejected the WTO in order to protect their own interests.

However, the United States also covets the market, although Europe because of the post-war caused by the shrinkage of the consumer market, but the European market still exists, the United States market is relatively saturated, the United States government naturally wants to find a market for their country's products, then the relatively sluggish consumer market in Europe has become a destination for Americans to dump goods, because in addition to Europe, other consumer markets are narrower.

Therefore, at that time, the Americans themselves initiated the drafting of a GATT agreement that was also beneficial to them and the United States on commodity dumping, which was beneficial to the Americans and not to other countries, and if we said that the country that benefited the most, it was Japan, because Japan was not only a vassal of the United States politically and militarily at the beginning, but also economically, so it was normal for Japan to develop, and it was only later that Japan and the United States had economic conflicts and contradictions, but basically the economic structures of the two countries were complementary. Sexuality's.

It is only 1991, and it is not yet the era of the WTO that Yao Yi experienced in his previous life, but the era of the GATT that the United States single-handedly controlled.