Recently, Professor Shi Jingxia published an academic thesis,“Bridging the Gap between the Ideal and Reality: Services Liberalization in the China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement” in the SSCI journal, ‘Asia Pacific Law Review’ (Vol. 22, No. 1, 2014).

In this thesis, Professor Shi advocated that in the ongoing China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement negotiations, considering the importance of services and the opening up of the service market in global and regional trade agreements, services liberalization is a key issue that cannot be ignored. Professor Shi pointed out that in order to guarantee that trade benefits generated by opening services’ markets will not be offset or diluted by other ongoing FTA negotiations involving Asia-Pacific countries (especially the Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership Agreement led by the U.S.),it is important that a relatively high quality liberalization level and regulatory framework should be designed in the field of services liberalization in the China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement.

    The thesis focused on the reason why, inthe China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement negotiations, the three parties should pay attention to and pursue high-quality services to more effectively improve their service trade level. Then, the thesis focused on several key issues in services liberalization negotiations, including market access, listing methods, and regulatory discipline.

Professor Shi provided several suggestions on how to make up the distance between an ideal state and the reality of services liberalization that the three parties are facing. These suggestions arebased on the understanding of TPP, TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement), TISA (GATS), US-Korean Free Trade Agreement and the latest services liberalization developments,and are expected to provide valuable reference points to the ongoing China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement negotiations.