The 20 years of Wang Lei's career have been closely linked to the WTO.The previous 10 years,as a member of the negotiating delegation for China's accession to the WTO,he witnessed the rough years of China's accession negotiations,and understood and became familiar with the rules of the WTO game.In the next 10 years,as a lawyer engaged in international trade litigation,he used WTO rules to help Chinese enterprises respond to anti-dumping cases,while disseminating WTO knowledge and concepts in China.

The youngest member of the Customs and Trade Department

In August 1986,at the age of 24,Wang Lei received a master's degree in law from Peking University.He was faced with a choice:to become a teacher at the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University,or to become a civil servant at the Second Division of the International Department of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.

The Second Division is a newly established division.Three months ago,the Chinese government officially proposed to restore its status as a contracting party to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(the predecessor of the WTO),and the Second Division was established for this purpose.

Wang Lei decided to become a civil servant.To a large extent,this was due to the interview with Wu Jiahuang,the director of his second division.

Wu Jiahuang took Zhang's"China Daily"in English and asked Wang Lei to read it,translate it to him,and then the interview ended.Two days later,Wang received a phone call from Wu,saying,"When will you report for duty?""His way of doing things is completely the work of Western government officials.It's completely different from domestic affairs.I feel very comfortable with it."Wang Lei recalled 20 years later.

Wu Jiahuang,an official who had worked for the United Nations for six or seven years and had just returned from his term of office,was proficient in English,open-minded,and efficient.Wang Lei was deeply impressed by his international style.

When Wang Lei joined,there were six people in the two places.Wang Lei is the youngest member of the two departments.Several other colleagues are over 45 years old.These six individuals are responsible for the preparation,communication,and coordination of a large number of documents for China's application for"customs review".According to Wang Lei,this is a secretarial team set up to apply for"customs resumption".

The staff of the Second Division are mostly foreign language learners,while the provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade are more legal,which gives Wang Lei a lot of room to apply."We went on duty without any training.We worked,groped,and learned.There is no ready model for you to learn about China's'resumption of customs'.Before coming to the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation,I only heard about the GATT.We can only familiarize ourselves with the GATT by reading some written materials."

As a means of promoting China's reform and opening up,China's motion to"resume customs clearance"was put forward in 1979.Before 1986,they were basically in the stage of feasibility study for"resuming customs".After China officially applied for"customs resumption"in 1986,from 1986 to 1988,the important task of the two departments was to prepare a memorandum on China's foreign trade system,providing a general description of China's economic system,investment system,exchange rate system,and so on-known internally as"filling out the form"-for review by members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

This is an unprecedented attempt,and many problems require creative solutions.China has a special economic system.Wang Lei and his colleagues need to speculate on the 36 provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,apply legal thinking to the drafting process of the memorandum,and make explanations of China's economic system as understandable as possible to foreigners.

Since 1988,Wang Lei has been resident in Geneva as a member of the Chinese Foreign Trade Delegation.Based on the memorandum submitted by China,he has conducted regular exchanges and collisions with officials of the GATT organization and representatives of member countries.During his stay in Geneva,Wang Lei would return to China approximately every two months to organize department level officials from various ministries and commissions to Geneva for communication and explanation,and to receive various inquiries from the other party.

In Wang Lei's view,the essence of"resuming customs clearance"is"exchange market":China cedes a certain market space in exchange for the right of certain commodities to enter the markets of other member countries.The most crucial factor in negotiations is the asking price,which areas are open to the outside world,to what extent,and in return,what are the opening conditions for the other party."External negotiations cannot be without verbal arguments,and every inch of land must be contested.However,what is more complex and difficult than external negotiations is often internal coordination,and how to achieve internal coordination and agreement with various ministries and commissions on certain open conditions."Wang Lei said.In the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s,there was absolute state monopoly in the fields of telecommunications and finance,and some other sectors also wanted to try to ensure that their fields were not subject to the impact of openness."Getting officials at all levels of the Chinese government to gradually become familiar with,understand,and accept the rules of the GATT game is an important part of the entire process of"resuming customs".".

It is difficult for foreigners to understand China's economic system and recognize that China is eligible for membership.For example,China's economic system is a"planned commodity economy"that is difficult for foreigners to understand.In their view,the commodity economy is"barter",which has long been withdrawn from mainstream human economic life.However,the term"market economy"was not allowed in China before 1992.For example,foreigners are also confused about the enterprise system implemented in China-the"factory director responsibility system under the leadership of the Party committee"-because in their view,this enterprise system lacks a legal sense of responsibility,and if the enterprise mismanages or goes bankrupt,no one will really bear the relevant responsibility.

But the"big country effect"compensates for foreigners'doubts about China's economic system.Compared to Switzerland,with a population of only 6 million,Belgium,with a population of 9 million,and Britain,with a population of 50 million,China,with a population of 1.1 billion at that time,was in any case an unimaginably large market and producer.Moreover,the upsurge of reform and opening up in China in the 1980s has continuously unleashed the vitality of the Chinese economy.Economic reforms such as the joint production and contracting responsibility system and the cancellation of foreign exchange certificates have all attracted strong attention from the international community.China's"re entry"will undoubtedly greatly advance the pace of reform and opening up.In May 1989,the most crucial bilateral agreement between China and the United States was basically reached,and China's"resumption of customs"is just around the corner.

For well-known reasons,this process basically stalled after the spring and summer of 1989.At the end of 1990,China's"resumption of customs"negotiations stalled for 18 months before returning to the agenda.However,Western countries have repeatedly raised asking prices,and the links that had already been negotiated through hardships before 1989 have been pushed back.In addition,the Chinese government wants to"resume customs"before the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT)was changed to the World Trade Organization(WTO)in 1995,in order to obtain the founding membership of the WTO,but this goal has not been achieved.For this reason,from 1995 to 1997,the negotiations on China's accession to the WTO were in a state of flux.It was not until Zhu Rongji visited the United States in 1999 and reached a framework agreement with the United States that China's WTO accession negotiations reached a new climax.

A person who helps Chinese companies file"anti-dumping"lawsuits

In 1996,Wang Lei,who had worked for 10 years for China's"re entry to the WTO",proposed to resign.At this time,he was already the Deputy Director of the WTO Division(renamed from the Second Division in 1994).

The resignation was entirely due to personal reasons:his wife,whom he met during his stay in Geneva,was already working in Luxembourg and had been separated for a long time,forcing Wang Lei to make difficult choices.It is said that Long Yongtu,who was then assistant minister of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation,was very angry at the imminent departure of this capable general who was deeply familiar with WTO affairs.However,in the end,he specially authorized Wang Lei to go abroad to reunite with his wife.

During his stay in Geneva,Wang Lei spent a lot of time studying WTO affairs in his bachelor's dormitory,and published several papers in relevant foreign journals.Academic exchanges established his influence,which led him to win the appointment of a Belgian law firm in 1996.As the only Chinese lawyer officially registered with the local bar association in Belgium at that time,Wang Lei's responsibility was to help the institute develop its business in China.Brussels is only 150 kilometers from Luxembourg,and Wang Lei can balance his career and family.

Wang Lei,who is well versed in the rules of the WTO game and skilled in dealing with officials and entrepreneurs at all levels in the West,is very good at handling international trade lawsuits.Since 1996,Wang Lei's biggest theme in business has been to help Chinese enterprises respond to various anti-dumping cases.During his stay in Brussels,Wang Lei often flew back to meet domestic customers.With China's accession to the WTO in 2001,Wang Lei saw greater room for development at home.In 2002,he returned home with his wife and became a partner of Gaopeng Law Firm,where he developed a professional anti-dumping response team of 10 people.During his 10 year career as a foreign and domestic lawyer,he has handled nearly 50 anti-dumping cases and served more than 80 Chinese companies.

With his efforts,a number of well-known enterprises such as Saint Elephant and Beijing Panasonic have obtained zero tax rates in responding to the lawsuit,while more enterprises have changed from high tax rates to reasonable tax rates.For example,Nanfang Bicycle won the anti-dumping lawsuit initiated by Malaysia,with the tax rate as high as 186%reduced to 11.8%,and the channel for exporting to Southeast Asia has reopened.

In addition to the litigation,Wang Lei spent a lot of time disseminating the rules of the WTO game that he is familiar with.He is a WTO affairs consultant for the Ministry of Commerce of China and the Guangdong Provincial Government,and often travels to various parts of the country for WTO keynote speeches and training.

All lectures are compulsory,as these knowledge"benefits from my previous work(in the government),so I should return these things to everyone free of charge.Someone asked me how much you would charge,and I said no charge,just manage the air ticket and accommodation.".

Wang Lei believes that five years after China's accession to the WTO,the awareness and behavior of the government and the business community have been gradually changing,but the understanding of the rules of the WTO game is still uneven.The central level government can better understand the rules of the WTO game,while some local governments have relatively lagged behind in understanding them.For example,some actively initiated industry departments to establish industry price alliances,which in fact violates the principle of free competition,Some local governments brazenly subsidize anti-dumping responding enterprises and use them as political achievements,which is also an incredible violation of the rules of the WTO game.

"Many issues do not suddenly disappear because China joins the WTO.The WTO will promote China's reform pace,but there is a process involved.Even if China joins the WTO again,there will still be many issues that need to be resolved gradually."The imbalance at the enterprise level is also evident.Among enterprises responding to anti-dumping lawsuits,some take action very normatively,while others prevaricate with officials sent by foreign countries to verify the actual situation of the enterprise,such as dealing with industrial and commercial and tax inspections.

Once,when an investigation officer sent by the European Union requested the president of a southern company to open the customs broker's office and inspect the customs declaration,the president used various flawed excuses to prevent it,but at the same time instructed his subordinates to tamper with the customs declaration.On another occasion,a British investigation official asked a few detailed questions about the"political outlook"column in an employee's personnel file of a certain company.The smug company leader secretly erased the"political outlook"column while copying the file,but this small action was immediately discovered when the copy was sent to the investigation officer."Actually,the political outlook column will not affect the investigation results at all."

"Because the conduct of the enterprises involved gave the investigating officials reason to suspect that the materials of the enterprises were untrue,both of them were ultimately convicted of dumping and imposed high anti-dumping duties.".This has also taught Wang Lei a lesson.As a lawyer team that wins by professionalism,brand reputation is more important than anything else.Therefore,he has changed from initially accepting anti-dumping cases generally to only accepting companies with standardized management,as well as companies that are willing to be honest with lawyers."Companies that are not honest would rather not do it.We have had cases where we withdrew halfway."

"However,if we carefully prepare and effectively respond to anti-dumping lawsuits,about 70%of companies have the opportunity to obtain low tax rates,or even zero tax rates."

Anti dumping is a way for some countries to use WTO game rules for bargaining."In fact,the WTO is a place where big countries compete for strength,constantly competing and bargaining with each other.After China joins the WTO,it should not only passively abide by the rules of the WTO,but also use the rules of the WTO game for its own purposes."Wang Lei said.

Wang Lei believes that there is still much room for the Chinese government and enterprises to improve their awareness and ability to use the rules of the WTO game to serve themselves.

(This article is translated by software translator for reference only.)