Trade Relief Survey Begins To Upgrade From Low Value-Added Products To High Value-Added Products.

2009, China

How to deal with high incidence

Traditional growth patterns are more likely to stimulate trade frictions.

China encountered in 2009

Yang Yi: under the background of the financial crisis, countries have adopted various measures to increase their support for their manufacturing industry in order to save their economy and reduce various political pressures.

Therefore, from the perspective of phenomenon, the increase in trade frictions is an acute conflict in the financial crisis.

But we should also see deeper contradictions.

As the second largest trading body and the largest exporter in the world, China is facing the trend of trade friction, which objectively reflects the complementary and close dependence between China's industry and developed economies, as well as the similarity of industrial structure with emerging and developing economies.

On the one hand, the rise of China's industrial competitiveness has led some countries to take trade protectionist policies and measures as a political means to contain China's economic development and pressure on China, so as to safeguard China's macroeconomic stability and increase the difficulty, cost and risk of the import and export trade interests. On the other hand, we should reconsider that China's economic growth mode and trade growth mode are insufficient, and the trade growth mode is extensive and trade imbalance is prominent.

In contrast, Germany, which has long been the world's largest exporter, seldom has any trade friction cases against it. The fundamental reason is that Germany's main export products are high technology and high value-added products, which are difficult to replace, and are also the key products needed by some countries in their economic development.

Combined with the current industrial situation in China, what industries are the high incidence areas of international trade survey?

Yang Yi: due to the international financial crisis, trade protectionism, labor, land and other factors cost increase, energy mineral and environmental constraints and other comprehensive factors, the industrial development environment tends to be complex, and the future industrial security is facing greater uncertainty.

Judging from the investigation and assessment in recent years, textile, light industry, steel and other industries have strong international competitiveness. Petrochemical, automotive, equipment manufacturing, shipbuilding, electronic information, and agricultural products [18.75 1.08%] have certain international competitiveness, and high-end industries such as optical fiber and service industries still do not have international competitiveness.

At the same time, besides the international competitiveness, it depends on the external trade dependence of the industry.

Automobile, machinery, building materials and other raw materials and finished products have low dependence on foreign trade and relatively good industrial safety. Light industries, textiles, clothing, ships, information and other products are highly dependent on foreign trade due to finished products, and are greatly affected by fluctuations in external demand. Steel, petrochemical, chromatic metals and other materials are highly dependent on external materials, and safety is greatly affected by upstream supply.

At the same time, trade friction cases in recent years also reflect the rapid expansion of trade remedy surveys from low value-added products, such as textiles and light industrial products, to high value-added products such as Electromechanical, medical and health products, chemical products, microelectronics, food and animal products.

In June 30th this year, the European Union launched an anti-dumping investigation on China's data card and launched an investigation into the start of safeguard measures for data cards. It is estimated that the amount of the case will be as high as 4 billion US dollars. This is the first time that such high-tech electronic products have appeared in the trade relief survey. In the 1~7 months of this year, 41 foreign trade relief investigations to China involved 9 industries, such as electronics, textile, chemical industry, building materials, light industry, metallurgy, nonferrous metals, paper making and metal products.

Among them, metallurgy, building materials, chemical industry and light industry are among the top four.

More and more barriers need to be broken down one by one.

In June this year, OECD (OECD), joint China World Trade Center Development Association and WTO (World Trade Organization) jointly released the report. From November 1, 2009 to mid May of November 1, 2009, G20 (group of 20), as a whole, fulfilled the promise of not adding new barriers to international trade and investment under the situation of financial and economic crisis. Most investment policies were more open and pparent to foreign investors.

Does this mean that the international trade frictions will change?

Yang Yi: in terms of quantity, the number of trade remedy cases this year has decreased compared with the same period last year, but accounts for a large proportion of the total number of Global trade cases.

According to the latest report released by the world bank, 47% newly launched trade relief surveys and 82% completed cases in the world are targeted at China.

In addition to the trade remedy survey, some countries have directly implemented trade protection measures against Chinese goods. In the 15 new trade protection policies launched this year, 10 of China's commodities accounted for 67%.

After the financial crisis, the global economy is facing readjustment. It will undergo a long period of low growth. All countries pay more attention to the balanced development of both inside and outside, and seek new competitive advantages through structural adjustment.

Developed countries demand "global economic rebalancing", so China's manufacturing exports will remain the main objective of global protectionism.

It can be said that in the post crisis era, China's trade frictions will be normalized, complicated and diversified.

What are the new features of trade friction in the new international trade situation?

Yang Yi: at present, various new trade barriers have become a feature of international trade protectionism.

The content of trade disputes has expanded rapidly from price to quantity to various standards, such as safety standards, hygienic standards, packaging labels, information technology standards, environmental labelling, labor safety standards and welfare standards. This has a greater and more lasting impact on our export products.

According to the AQSIQ survey, in 2009, 34.3% of the export enterprises were affected by foreign technical trade measures to varying degrees, and the total export trade directly lost 57 billion 432 million US dollars, an increase of US $6 billion 890 million over 2008, accounting for 4.78% of the total export volume of the same period.

At the same time, with the rise of the new round of low-carbon economy, some new trade barriers may also be formed in this area. Now some developed countries are actively asking for the "carbon tariff" to be a signal.

In addition to all kinds of "technical trade barriers" and "green trade barriers" that everyone knows, some developed countries are making use of the differences in economic level, educational culture and moral standards between developing countries and developing a new and more hidden international trade barrier, namely, the blue trade barrier.

At least tens of thousands of factories in China's coastal areas have received the social responsibility audit of multinational corporations. Some enterprises have obtained more orders because of their good performance, and some factories have been abolished because of their lack of sincerity.