On the Feasibility of Using the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism as the Trade Dispute Settlement Mechanism for the "Belt and Road" Initiative

China - 22 April 2018

As soon as the Belt and Road initiative was proposed, it attracted great attention at home and abroad. The dispute settlement mechanism for the Belt and Road initiative has also become a widely discussed subject. Many experts and scholars advocate the establishment of a new dispute settlement mechanism for the Initiative. However, there are many different opinions on how to design this new mechanism, and no consensus has been reached yet. This paper examines how the countries along the Belt and Road routes participate in and make use of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and compares China’s participation with that of the most active representative WTO members among them, such as India and South Korea. Based on this, the article concludes that the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is still the best choice for trade dispute settlement among the countries along the Belt and Road routes at least until a new mechanism is established.

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