New Resistance To Shoe Enterprises' Future Development: Intellectual Property Disputes

As a mass consumer goods, "Chinese shoes" are being redefined by countries all over the world.

On the one hand, Chinese shoes have interpreted their pivotal position on the world stage with their own pace.

According to statistics, in the current output of 13 billion pairs of shoes in the global footwear industry, China has produced 10 billion pairs, exports nearly 7 billion pairs, and has accounted for more than 60% share in the world footwear industry.

That is to say, 6 billion people all over the world have an average pair of Chinese shoes.

On the other hand, Chinese shoes inevitably affect the world, especially the European and American nerves, which leads to confusion. Wherever Chinese shoes go, they will produce boundless associations -- whether the EU, the United States or Russia, as long as there are Chinese shoes, it means that the local footwear industry has been seriously squeezed.

Therefore, around the title of "Chinese shoes", many western mainstream media have made numerous articles, and world-renowned research institutions have also written books on the basis of "Chinese shoes", so that "Chinese shoes" have become the "focus" proposition all over the world.

Therefore, we see that under the premise of the deepening of the new economic wave, the trade volume of China's footwear industry is increasing, and it has also led to strong rebound from these countries or regions until fierce confrontation.

With the wider and deeper participation of Chinese enterprises in international competition, the non-tariff barriers to trade will also increase and the situation is grim.

In order to protect the economic development of our country, all countries are "closely guarded".

Non tax barriers, also known as green trade barriers, are characterized by their strong concealment, easy adjustment and easy operation, resulting in conflicting goals much smaller than tariff barriers. They also have an immediate effect on restricting imports of products, and are increasingly favored by all trading nations.

Countries in the world, especially the developed countries, are increasingly playing the banner of maintaining the order of import and export, protecting the interests of domestic consumers, protecting the ecological environment and protecting intellectual property rights, protecting domestic industries and undermining a fair international trade environment.

Therefore, we deliberately take stock of all kinds of trade barriers that Chinese shoe companies will face in the future and analyze ways to avoid them.

In the shoe production of China, a large number of enterprises have adopted the OEM OEM method, lack of their own brands and single sales channels, thus forming the export of footwear products to the low end products, mainly adopting the export mode of "quantitative regulation model", and price has become the main competitive means.

The lower labor cost makes China's footwear products have obvious manufacturing cost advantages. In the international market, a strong competition has been made for some traditional footwear producing countries, resulting in frequent trade protection measures adopted by many countries to restrict the import of Chinese footwear products. China's footwear exports are facing many difficulties.

Anti dumping is the primary factor that restricts the export of footwear in China.

For the harsh market: February 2005 announced the implementation of "advance import licensing inspection measures" for footwear in China; in June 2005 and July, anti-dumping investigations were carried out on the labor insurance shoes made by two tax numbers made in China; in January last year, the decision was made to reject the "market economy status" of 13 footwear enterprises in China. It was considered that China's "below cost" leather shoes hurt the interests of the EU shoe makers; since April 7, 2006, the Transitional Plan for levying provisional anti-dumping duties on imported leather shoes in China has been enacted, and the tax rate has gradually increased from 4.8% to 19.4% within 5 months from April. Last year, the European Union Council approved the plan to impose a formal anti-dumping duty on Chinese leather shoes, and 16.5% anti-dumping duties on Chinese leather shoes respectively. The EU is the most restrictive measure to our footwear industry.

At the same time, Pakistan, Peru, Venezuela, Canada and other countries have also taken anti-dumping measures on China's footwear products.

Anti dumping has already had a negative impact on China's footwear exports.

The Chinese businessmen who join the war group and Russia, who suffer from their "grey customs clearance", are likely to be driven out of the Russian market forever.

On 4 1, Russia's law restricting foreigners' operation of retail business came into effect.

According to China's official figures, more than 200 thousand of the Chinese people who are officially approved by Russia and China are living in the Far East of Russia. Most of them are workers and retailers.

The fate of these people will be reversed with a "ban" imposed by the Russian government.

Chinese products and businessmen have encountered raindrop provocations and attacks worldwide, and this is only a microcosm of the survival of Chinese enterprises in the international market.

Chinese enterprises are not only competing with their competitors unilaterally, but are facing an increasingly hostile camp.

After the United States announced that it would levy countervailing duties on Chinese products and put China on the WTO, Japan and Mexico immediately explicitly joined the US countervailing action against China. There was news that the EU was also considering revising its trade policy toward China, which is likely to change the looser stance on China's "non market economies" on the issue of subsidies.

According to the statistics of China's Ministry of Commerce, as of the end of 2006, there were over 800 anti dumping, countervailing, safeguard measures and special investigations involving 47 Chinese countries and regions.

According to the WTO report, there has been a noticeable downward trend in anti-dumping cases around the world.

The international community's anti dumping actions against Chinese enterprises are showing more and more Gang oriented and centralized tendency. What will be the "made in China" tomorrow?

Only after in-depth analysis of the opponent's "killer trick" can we find the answer.

Extension of the fence: "barrier" and "barrier of origin", which are uprooted by the European Union. According to the existing legislation of the European Union, the products imported from third places only require the declaration of origin information when declaration. Producers are not responsible for adding labels of origin to the products. If the markings are added, they must ensure that the information is correct, so as to protect consumers and competitors from misleading.

However, in the future, the EU will stipulate that all imported textiles and clothing products in the area must be accompanied by labels of origin.

As early as in 2003, the European Commission adopted a motion on the EU's prospects for expanding the textile and clothing industry in the latter area, and set up a high-level working group to submit proposals on how to strengthen the competitiveness of the European textile and clothing industry.

In July 2004, the group issued a report on important issues such as trade policy, intellectual property protection and mandatory origin labels.

After the panel released the report, the European Commission considered the establishment of a new product labeling mechanism, plus the EU manufacturing logo.

However, in June 2004, the European consumer advisory group objected to the establishment of any mandatory system, adding labels on "non EU food products" to "EU manufacturing".

Therefore, the European Commission withdrew its proposal and no longer advocated the establishment of the mandatory origin labeling system.

However, recently, the European Parliament, EU Member States and the industry have voiced that they should stipulate that some imported products, including textiles and clothing, are accompanied by the origin mark.

For example, in September 6, 2005, the European Parliament adopted a TokiaSaifi report on the textile and clothing industry after 2005. The report stressed the need to impose mandatory origin and label requirements on textiles and clothing products so that consumers could learn about the source of the products.

In addition, the European Parliament passed the report of Lucas in October 13, 2005. The report asked the European Commission to study the feasibility of introducing the European labelling system.

This will prompt the European Commission to conduct in-depth studies and propose new proposals on the issue of origin labels of imported products.

Some EU Member States seem to be quite supportive of the establishment of the origin label system, especially in Italy.

As early as March this year, the Italian Footwear Association and the European Footwear Association jointly launched a publicity campaign in Europe to seek the support of the public for compulsory labeling of footwear from non EU countries.

The purpose of this association is to arouse widespread concern of the public and government in European countries.

It is believed that this will help consumers grasp the origin information of products and avoid misleading, and further prevent infringement of intellectual property rights.

Their position is supported by many politicians.

In Italy, the fact that imported products are accompanied by false labels is quite serious.

According to the report, Italy customs confiscated goods with unreal origin labels every day, most of which were imported from the mainland of China.

At present, although the EU has failed to impose a compulsory origin label on imported products, the European Commission may reconsider the issue of the origin labels of imported footwear products in view of the increasing demand for further protection of the EU footwear industry.