China's latest economic statistics show that imports and exports fell 7.9 percent year on year in the first three quarters, down 8.8 percent in September from a year earlier. A series of signs indicates that the steady growth of foreign trade is not optimistic.
In addition to the TPP (trans-pacific partnership) and negotiate the TTIP (transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement) will be the impact of the new trade system framework, within the WTO framework, mainly on technical barriers to trade protectionism, are also presented to accelerate the spread of the trend, and has impact on the Chinese export enterprises.
In terms of impact range, the results of the survey of several enterprises published in shenzhen in September were taken as examples: some 34.6 percent of the export enterprises were affected by the foreign technical trade measures. In terms of total size, 2014 WTO members has submitted 2239 TBT notification, except the United States reporting year-on-year growth of 74%, the Middle East and emerging countries, such as "area" all the way along the route area to the top of the increase in the number.
Broad perspective, the Technical Trade Measures mainly refers to the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement (Technical Barriers to Trade and TBT) "and" health and plant health Measures Agreement (Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, SPS) "of various forms of non-tariff Barriers Measures. Usually these measures to safeguard national security, human health and safety, animal or plant life and health, the environment, for reasons, such as quality through technical regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures, implementation of health and plant health, technical barriers to trade.
For product exporting countries, appropriate technical trade measures can help improve their technical and product advantages. But because its not violate WTO organization non-discriminatory, fair trade and principles of transparency, with more space, more concealment as barriers to trade, export enterprises to cope with difficulty will multiply.
"Technical trade measures have become the second biggest factor that affects the export of our products after the exchange rate, and the comprehensive response of China's technical trade measures should be strengthened." Wei chuanzhong, President of the China institute of inspection and quarantine, warned.
Within the framework of the so-called comprehensive response, in addition to the WTO rules to solve disputes, the academic circles, points out that enterprise solution mainly have three: a scientific and technological level, to improve their products in order to go beyond the limitations of technical barriers to trade; 2. Actively adjust the structure of export products; Third, diversify the export market. Apart from the eu and the United States and Japan, the market of developing countries such as Asia and Africa is valued.
Recent trends show that under the background of global economic recovery is slow, most of China's export enterprises was mainly the hope of export market diversification, with "One Belt And One Road" and other emerging industries in developing countries form the increasingly fierce competition, is narrowing. In the case of China's foreign trade industry, with the help of technology and product upgrading to realize the path of breakthrough, and constantly improve the leadership of its own technology, the potential of the reverse force has been formed.
"New disaster area"
Technical barriers to trade (TBT) are becoming a major barrier to Chinese exports.
General administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine has released the survey data show: because 36.1% of export enterprises have been the obstacle of different level, China's export trade direct loss of $75.52 billion in 2014, compared with the increase of $9.32 billion, accounted for 3.2% of exports at the same period. Once encountered technical barriers to trade, export enterprises loss mainly characterized by loss of "orders", the second is "down-cycled" and other forms of losses include return goods, port handling, etc.
The products that are affected by the industry are electromechanical instruments, metallized metal, textile shoes and hats, toy furniture, rubber leather and so on.
There are two main methods of TBT in foreign countries except antidumping and withdrawal enquiries: the first is the establishment of strict and complicated technical standards; Second, import restrictions. For example, the new trade law, passed by the Indonesian parliament in 2014, allowed the government to restrict imports and exports through tariffs and non-tariff barriers. For that reason, Indonesia first restricted the import of a large number of imported alloy steel, and from next year all mobile phones imported to Indonesia must have their own domestic components.
According to geographical division, guangdong, zhejiang, shandong, tianjin, jiangsu and other Chinese foreign trade export big provinces "all the way." The export volume accounted for about one-third of guangdong's total, and the total amount of direct losses reached $23.73 billion in 2014, making it the most severely affected province.
According to guo chu, a researcher at the institute of international economics of the guangdong academy of social sciences, there are several new features for this new wave of protectionism.
First, there are various non-tariff trade barriers in the trend of trade protectionism, especially the technical, patent and green environmental barriers. Second, the technical barriers to trade have increased significantly. All the major economies will be information technology, biotechnology, energy conservation, environmental protection, new energy and other emerging industries as a new economic growth point, attempt to rely on capital and key technology, occupied the commanding heights industrial development; Third, the influence of technical trade barriers has become more and more widespread, and some emerging countries have started to set up technical trade barriers from the protection of their own industries.
Caijing (blogs, microblogging) to obtain a reporter produced jointly by guangdong province pledges inspect bureau and the department of commerce of guangdong province technical trade measures the annual report (2015) "(hereinafter referred to as the white paper), the paper provides a series of relevant evidence:
In 2014, WTO members submitted 2,239 TBT notifications, including 180 in the us, a 74 per cent year-on-year increase. Issued the white paper says, "the United States notified technical regulations will not only directly influence on Chinese products exported to the United States, will cause the compulsory requirements of other countries have similar, forming a domino effect."
The total number of TBT reports is visible: more than half of the notifications are submitted by members of the Middle East, South America, the United States and the Caribbean. "Is worth to pay close attention to dynamic emerging countries and regions, such as the Middle East is reported in recent years, the overall increase in the number of, 'all the way along the route of countries and regions' area of TBT notification also improved in recent years." The white paper also says.
"As China's own Labour, resources, costs rise, more and more industry began to shift to other developing countries, such as asean and countries along the way ' 'area, their past mainly rely on imports of industrial products and is now processing exporter. In order to protect domestic industries and markets, some relatively high technical standards and regulations will be developed, which in turn restrict Chinese imports. Chen quan, director of guangdong's WTO/TBT communications center, explained to caijing.
In 2012, the direct loss caused by TBT in guangdong was about $220.7 billion, accounting for 32.22% nationwide. In 2013, guangdong adopted measures to reduce losses of nearly $15 billion for enterprises, and the direct loss caused by TBT fell to 11.1% nationwide. By 2014, the share had recovered to 31.4%, which was close to 2012. The reason for the rebound is that Chen quan believes it is affected.
"The TBT used to be the main use of developed countries and regions has become a developing country, which is a sensitive trend. In the future, we should focus on the adjustment of TBT, from purely studying the developed countries to the developing countries. Chen Quan said.
However, the fact that Chinese exporters are still mostly in the low and low end of the global industrial chain and the scale of their enterprises are still small, and in some ways, they will be more competitive with other developing countries.
Data shows, the white paper: large mechanical and electrical equipment companies in guangdong in 2014, the direct losses suffered about $531 million, accounts for only seven categories of guangdong large export enterprises 9.86% of the amount of direct losses. In 2014, the company suffered a direct loss of $12.47 billion, accounting for 95.84% of the total direct loss of mechanical and electrical instruments in the province in 2014, and the losses were even worse.
Industry is generally believed that the transformation and upgrading of on the one hand, from the enterprise itself, independent research and development ability is not strong, with independent intellectual property rights of core technology, product quality management level needs to improve, vulnerable to foreign technical barriers to restrict; On the other hand, the enterprise is not sensitive to the target market countries technical standards change, enterprises are less able to jointly deal with foreign technical barriers, predominantly passive response, active use of WTO rules is not doing enough to develop survey of foreign technical barriers.
"Technical barriers to trade have actually become a major barrier to trade, but guangdong's enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, cannot adapt to this trend." An official of the fair trade bureau of guangdong's commerce bureau said in a white paper published.
To cope with different
What has China done to cope with the changing old and new situations?
Prior to this, the ministry of science and technology proposed that China should establish a TBT early warning system in three stages. In the strategy of the technical trade measure and warning project plan in the outline of the solution is: China in three stages of establishing department coordination, industry leading, participate in technical trade barriers warning system, science and technology support. Within one year to two years, an early warning system should be established in key industries to achieve quick response; Within three to five years, the standard level of the key industry should be improved, and the passive response should be transferred to the active response; In the next five to eight years, China will be able to adapt to the market economy and the internationalization of the Chinese standard, and form a mechanism for the overall strategic response.
The scheme also divides the Chinese deal with TBT three problems: agricultural products (000061, shares) (food, aquatic products, livestock and poultry products) focus on solve the problem of drug residue alternative products, chemical products focus on disabled issues focus on solving the problem of intellectual property rights, high-tech products.
China's current response structure includes three parts: the inter-ministerial conference on technical trade measures led by aqsiq since 2003; National WTO/TBT-SPS advisory centre; Relevant coping mechanisms established by local governments at all levels. The three companies have their respective roles and cooperation.
With "area" strategy, China along with the country's trade volume increasing, multiple related ministries and commissions are also vested began to implement targeted layout: new policy to deal with TBT problems, international cooperation department of general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine Lin hai recently revealed that there are many research institutions "neighbourhood" all the way along the national certification requirements, technical standards for research, is expected to the end of results. In addition, the bureau will study the technical trade measures of the eu, the United States and other countries, and accelerate the establishment of information systems at all levels.
"The guangdong and zhejiang provinces directly affected by TBT are also active. With WTO/TBT center of guangdong province as an example, the province only engaged in research of TBT to the established research system in recent years not only specialized on TBT, also in the aspect of establishing early warning information platform for the fruitful work. At the same time, they also continuously carry out the popularization of professional knowledge, providing knowledge guidance and research service for all kinds of export enterprises.
TBT has the non-discrimination principle, domestic enterprises and foreign enterprises alike, therefore, to distinguish between different countries: first, developed countries tend to have high technical content, the advantage of advanced production equipment, it will be improved by improving the technical requirements for foreign product cost, reduce the impact on the domestic enterprises; Some developing countries, because they do not, will not cultivate related industries, often imitating developed country standards. Such technical trade measures should be addressed from a technical innovation perspective.
"The technical barriers are fair. When the discourse power is not strong, it can only choose to adapt, the enterprise should practice the 'internal work', constantly improve its own quality and service quality. It's better than going out on the go." A person in shenzhen who has been engaged in standard technology research for many years told caijing.
TBT is the trouble is that some countries will use the advantage in technology and industrial development, in order to protect the public interest as an excuse to develop more demanding than the international standard of technical standards, regulations and certification system, etc., to limit and offset of the developing countries in terms of land, resources and labor have certain advantages, limits the import of their products, achieve the purpose of protecting its domestic industry development.
Ren qing, a partner with China law firm, told caijing that there are several ways of judging the situation:
The first is to see whether there are relevant standards in the world, such as existence, it is hard to say that the standards of importing countries are wrong; Second, if there is a lack of international standards, or a tougher standard for imports, see what it does. The health of children, for example, is supported by science. If not, it may violate WTO rules. Third, we should see whether there is alternative measures in order to achieve these purposes, if there are several reasonable alternative measures, also can say the restrictions on trade more than the limits of necessity, may violate the rules.
"In addition, for emerging manufacturing countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia, a series of standards on low-tech products such as toys will be identified. If they can't do it themselves, it would violate WTO rules, too." Ren Qing said.
In view of the TBT set up by the political, balance deficit and protectionism, the technical trade barriers committee has also been established in the WTO. According to the regulation of the TBT agreement and relevant guidelines, WTO members in formulating technical regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures, all of them no international standards, or substantial differences with the international standards and have a significant impact on international trade, shall be notified to the WTO before the release, and provide comment period of not less than 60 days, ask for comments from members of other measures to draft opinions, and to consider the review opinions.
In order to cope with the already present problems of TBT within the WTO framework, ren qing can be divided into several levels:
First of all, "there is no way to be satisfied"; Secondly, some representative issues should be submitted to relevant departments, which should be dealt with in the framework of the WTO. Third, it is necessary to use WTO multilateral mechanisms, especially the dispute settlement mechanism to defend interests. Including the meeting of WTO/TBT committee and SPS committee, WTO trade policy review mechanism and WTO dispute settlement mechanism; Fourth, if the involved question doesn't work, and the Chinese think of each other's problems of TBT, the restrictions on trade beyond the need to restrict, can also be filed to the WTO, as a final solution.
"From a rule point of view, it might be these paths. Whether they can have a very good effect depends on the specific situation and follow-up of each case. "There is no good way out," ren said.
Prudent to break
In addition to the back-end passive should foreign, export industry how to go to the front, as soon as possible from the adoption of international standards to give priority to with China set international standards, is becoming the focus of domestic industry from all walks of life.
"To actively promote enterprises' substantive participation in international standard system revision and participation in international standardization activities is to help enterprises expand international business to obtain international business
