Towards a Fair World Trade Regime——The Role of S & D Treatment Revisited

This article discusses the fairness issue of WTO trade law.It starts from the point that fairness is one of the policy goals that WTO trade law should pursue.However,due to the intrinsical disadvantages of the developing countries in their participation in the world trade system,non-discrimination principle of WTO may lead to unfair results.Special & Differential Treatment in WTO trade law is a kind of corrective means of redistribution.This article conducts a historical and normative survey of Special & Differential Treatment and reveals that these rules have not played their proper role in establishing a fair trade order.The authors then put forward their suggestions for WTO trade law to be more fair and explore some problems inherently in Special & Differential Treatment.