The draft amendment to the Chinese Foreign Trade Law, submitted for deliberation for the third time, was passed by a unanimous vote at the eighth meeting of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which was closed on Tuesday.

The passage of the revised Foreign Trade Law, which will take effect on July 1, concluded China's two-year-long review of its laws related to foreign trade, making China's legal system consistent with its WTO commitment.

Previously, China had enact and revised 12 laws related to foreign trade under its WTO commitment, such as joint venture law, foreign enterprise law and customs law.

Huang Jianchu, chief of the economic law section under the Commission of the Legislative Affairs of the NPC Standing Committee said the legislative work directly related to China's WTO commitment has been ended and the review of the relevant administrative regulations turned to be the key job of the related departments in future.

The revised Foreign Trade Law has three major changes: individuals can also be operators of foreign trade; legally registered foreign trade operators can conduct both goods and technology import and export without receiving administrative approval any more; the foreign trade rights of some special products, like petroleum, grain, chemical fertilizer, cotton, sugar and edible oil, which were completely reserved for the state-owned companies in the past, should be publicly authorized and a certain ratio of these products is allowed to be imported and exported by non-authorized companies.

The revised Foreign Trade Law also added clauses concerning how to maintain fair trade order and how to exert trade relief, so that the domestic foreign trade conductors could utilize anti-subsidy and anti-dumping means under the WTO framework to safeguard their own justified interests in international trade affairs.

In order to respond promptly to sudden changes in foreign trade and provide better service to the operators, the revised law also adds clauses for establishing an early warning system, a public information service system, a statistics mechanism and publicity about illegal operations.

Compared with the only punishment in the current law -- withdrawal of operation credit -- the revised laws strengthens sanctions against illegal operations through adopting more severe punishments, from criminal penalties to administrative penalties and cancellation of operators' qualifications.

The revised law also has clauses on protecting intellectual property rights in trade, which is common in many countries' business law, aiming to protect the rights of both domestic and foreign property owners.

"The smooth passage of the revised law benefited from the full participation in the legislation by the NPC Standing Committee members, relevant administrative departments, state-owned and foreign-funded trade enterprises and commerce chambers," said Huang.

The clause on how to respond to the administrative punishment, which regulates that the trader can ask reconsideration or take legal proceedings, came from the suggestion of commerce chambers of foreign-funded trade enterprises. The clause on mandatory imports and exports was canceled because of the disagreement of members of the NPC Standing Committee, according to Huang.

He stressed that the revised Foreign Trade Law is relatively complete and feasible, but the effective implementation of the law cannot be achieved without the amendments of the related administrative regulations, which are still on the way.

(Xinhua News Agency April 7, 2004)