Abstract This article examines the interaction between the international economic & trade rules and the domestic cross-border e-commerce legislation; and proposes measures to promote the positive interaction between China's domestic legislation and international rules in the field of cross-border e-commerce, so as to better promote the orderly development of cross-border e-commerce. The first part of this article is the introduction of the international and domestic rules relative to the cross-border e-commerce. The article summarizes its changing trend, namely, that the domestic legislation tends to change from zero to one, from miscellaneous to united; whereas internationally, the e-commerce as a new issue has been incorporated into the international economic and trade rules. In addition, the new regional rules and the bilateral ones are far more comprehensive than the multilateral rules, serving as the foundation for the formation of the new multilateral e-commerce rules in the future, and as a good international background for the interaction between the domestic legislation and the international economic and trade rules. The second part of this article examines how the domestic legislation of e-commerce and the international economic and trade rules interact with each other. The article points out that the influences of the domestic legislation on the international rules of e-commerce include: laying the foundation for the formation of international rules of cross-border e-commerce; practically implementing and supplementing international rules; and promoting the further reform and improvement of international rules. This part also emphasizes the conditions under which the domestic rules can spread to the world: (1) the domestic rules need to be forward-looking; (2) the country has the capability of outputting the rules, namely, has the international influence and the discourse power of rulemaking; (3) the incentives such as being in line with the national interests, etc. The international economic and trade rules' impacts on the domestic legislation include: (1) domestic legislation will be restricted or limited by the signed or acceded international economic and trade agreements to a certain extent; (2) the international rules of cross-border e-commerce play an exemplary role and provide experience for the domestic legislation. The third part of this article puts forward some suggestions on how to promote the positive interactions between China's e-commerce legislation and international economic and trade rules. First of all, China should actively participate in bilateral, regional, and multilateral negotiations about economic and trade rules, and strive to better master the discourse power in the international economic and trade rulemaking, especially in cross-border e-commerce rulemaking. Second, China should, in a timely manner, adjust domestic legislation and pursue adjudication as well as implementation in accordance with the international rules, to promote the harmonization and unification of the international and domestic e-commerce rules. Third, China ought to strengthen the investigation and research on the domestic and international e-commerce rules, and actively absorb and learn from the international community's legislative experience and advanced practice according to the specific national conditions. Finally, it should integrate various push powers to strengthen the innovation research on the rules relating to the cross-border e-commerce. After forming a series of cross-border e-commerce rules which are relatively scientific and comprehensive, China could constantly supply more advanced model rules to the international community through a gradualist approach, namely, start from the bilateral level, and then spread to the regional as well as multilateral level. The main innovative part of this article is that it is based on the perspective of the rules' interaction, focusing on the cross-border e-commerce rules to explore the interaction between international economic and trade rules and domestic legislation. At present, the international and domestic societies are both constantly exploring and improving the relevant rules of cross-border e-commerce, the characteristics of which determine that the harmonization and interactions between those at international and domestic levels are very necessary. Therefore, this discussion is of great significance to both theory and practice.
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