Keywords: green trade barriers, environmental protection, agricultural products export
The export of agricultural products in China has been repeatedly hindered by green barriers.
With the enhancement of environmental awareness of the whole society, international agricultural trade has become the main field involved in various environmental protection rules and standards. An example is the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade and the Agreement on the Implementation of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures under the framework of the WTO, which stipulate that member governments have the right to take appropriate measures to ensure that human and animal foods are not affected by pollutants, toxins and additives, and that human health is not damaged by diseases carried by imported animals and plants. These exceptions give member States the power to formulate environmental protection standards that are effective for domestic products and imports according to their own environmental protection level. These institutional changes objectively support the formation of green trade barriers.
Green trade barrier refers to the technical, safety and hygiene standards of import and export commodities formulated by WTO members to protect the environment and national health. However, two principles must be followed: the principle of non-discrimination; Special consideration should be given to formulating these measures for developing country members. On this basis, WTO affirmed "legal green trade barriers". However, due to the unbalanced economic development of various countries, there is no standardized and fair evaluation standard for the so-called "legal green trade barriers", and this power is inevitably abused by many importing countries.
The production, processing, transportation, sales and final consumption of agricultural products are closely related to environmental protection, and green trade barriers will inevitably have a great impact on agricultural production and agricultural products trade. Generally speaking, green trade barriers are only effective for developing countries. Developed countries have good economic foundation, high technical level, strong environmental awareness and strict environmental protection standards, while developing countries have weak economic foundation and backward production technology, and their environmental protection level and standards cannot be compared with developed countries in a short time. In order to meet the needs of competition, developed countries often set excessively harsh environmental standards. Green trade barriers have become an unfair means of competition for developed countries to restrict imports and protect the domestic market by using the rules of the game allowed by WTO agreements. Therefore, the agricultural products of developed countries can enter the markets of developing countries smoothly, but the agricultural products of developing countries are often rejected by developed countries because it is difficult to meet the environmental protection standards of developed countries.
China is a developing agricultural country, and the environmental protection level of agricultural production is still relatively low. Compared with advanced countries, there is a big gap in the production and processing methods and techniques, packaging, storage and transportation, product composition and performance of agricultural products. Therefore, China is a country greatly affected by green trade barriers. According to United Nations statistics, in 2002, about 7.4 billion US dollars of export commodities, including agricultural products, were hindered by green trade barriers. Take the beekeeping industry as an example, China is a big country in the world, and its honey production and export both rank first in the world. However, at the beginning of this year, the EU stopped importing honey from China on the grounds that antibiotics such as chloramphenicol in China exceeded the standard. Many shopping malls in EU countries have removed honey made in China from their counters and stopped selling it. China honey that arrived in EU countries was returned. The EU even completely banned the import of animal-derived food and aquatic products from China. In addition, China has become the country with the largest number of "green trade barriers" in the United States, and even some developing countries have imposed green trade barriers on many agricultural products in China. Green trade barriers have brought huge losses to China's agricultural products export, and seriously weakened the competitiveness of China's export enterprises in the international market. Therefore, it is an urgent requirement to reasonably deal with the increasingly severe green trade barriers in international trade to get out of the export dilemma of agricultural products in China and promote the sustainable development of agriculture.
Analysis on the reasons why green barriers hinder the export of agricultural products in China
Objectively speaking, there are two reasons why China's agricultural exports encounter the dilemma of green trade barriers: on the one hand, trade protectionism under competitive pressure; On the other hand, it comes from ourselves.
external factor
Many agreements and rules on environmental protection in WTO are lack of standardization and unity, with many loopholes and imperfect dispute settlement mechanism. Exceptional rules breed opportunistic behavior. For example, the regulations on food hygiene and safety are vague. With the rise of international trade protectionism, some countries regard these imperfect rules as the basis for formulating discriminatory policies and put on a reasonable and legal mask for restricting imports. Under the current framework of WTO, there is no proper bilateral or multilateral informal coordination and communication mechanism. Once some changes occur, importing countries often fail to take remedial measures in time and suffer huge losses. For example, from June 5, 2008 to March 2002, Qingdao Customs returned 505.4 tons of frozen chicken because the importing country implemented new quarantine standards.
internal factor
Compared with international standards, China's environmental standards are too low, lacking a unified environmental certification system. Among the existing national standards 19278, less than 50% adopt international standards and foreign advanced standards, and high-tech standards are seriously lacking. In addition, foreign countries began to formulate standards in the product research and development stage, while the formulation of standards in China has a lag period and a long cycle. The low domestic environmental protection standards and the backward legal system of environmental protection trade put China in a passive position in dealing with green trade barriers.
The foreign trade system of agricultural products is not perfect. After the reform and opening up, the monopoly of state-owned foreign trade companies' import and export management rights has been broken, but China's agricultural products export has not yet established an effective system. The usual practice is that trading companies with import and export rights obtain goods from rural areas through acquisition or pre-signing, and then export them after further processing and packaging. Its disadvantage is that production and export are separated, and those responsible for production cannot manage export, and those responsible for export cannot participate in production. This separation leads to the inconsistency of the main interests, which leads to the information asymmetry and opportunistic behavior of both parties to the transaction.
The lack of intermediary organizations serving the production and sales of agricultural products makes it impossible to obtain, transmit and spread the market information of agricultural products in time. It often happens that an enterprise will repeat the same mistakes of other domestic enterprises for a long time after encountering green barriers. For example, in 2002, the European Union banned the import of food of animal origin from China. Due to the poor information, the enterprises fought their own battles and even suffered a series of rejections, resulting in heavy losses.
As a kind of property right system arrangement, the responsibility system of land contract management greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of farmers in the early stage of reform and opening up, and made agricultural production develop rapidly. However, with the continuous improvement of China's productive forces, great changes have taken place in the economic environment, and its disadvantages have gradually emerged. The biggest obstacle to the export of agricultural products is the dispersion of production. This decentralized mode of production with family as the unit lacks coordination and unity. For example, the unsynchronized pest control leads to incomplete control, which increases the frequency and quantity of pesticide spraying and makes the pesticide residues in agricultural products in China exceed the standard. Lack of economies of scale and insufficient investment in agriculture make it difficult to produce high-standard green products.
The tax and financial system of agricultural products production is not perfect. For example, at present, the common way of agricultural subsidies is to give subsidies directly to farmers, and its implementation effect and purpose have deviated. For farmers, a small per capita subsidy can't bring much support to their production. What farmers lack more is technology, and what they urgently need is market. Therefore, in terms of tax and financial subsidies, we should give preferential treatment to enterprises and intermediary organizations engaged in comprehensive agricultural production and management, to enterprises and farmers producing green products, and give financial support to institutions engaged in agricultural technology research and development of green pollution-free products. At present, China has little financial support for agricultural scientific research investment and agricultural technology popularization. According to statistics, from 65438 to 0996, the investment intensity of China government in agricultural scientific research was less than the average value of developed countries (2.37%)110 and the simple average value of 30 lowest-income countries (0.65%)13, far lower than that of developing countries such as India and Mexico.
Green technology research and development and green product production lack financial support. The imperfection of rural financial system in dual economy leads to a large amount of funds flowing out of agricultural sector through financial system. According to the statistics of the research group of the State Council Development Research Center, the net outflow of financial funds through rural credit cooperatives and postal savings in 2000 was1033.4 billion yuan. Among them, the net outflow of rural credit cooperatives was 872.2 billion yuan and the net outflow of postal savings was161200 million yuan. Small and medium-sized private enterprises engaged in the development and production of green products lack mortgage assets and it is difficult to obtain credit loans; As far as direct financing is concerned, China's capital market is not perfect, and venture capital engaged in green technology research and development has no exit channel, which limits the investment of venture capital in green product research and development.
Policy Suggestions on Crossing Green Trade Barriers of Agricultural Products
Above, the author analyzes the reasons why China's agricultural products export encounters green tariff barriers from the aspects of international trade rules, environmental protection standards, foreign trade system, intermediary organizations, agricultural land system and financial system. The author thinks:
In view of internal factors
Change the traditional agricultural production mode and introduce agricultural production into the track of green agriculture. The central government and local governments should play a leading role in implementing the contraction strategy for agricultural production that is not conducive to environmental protection; Vigorously support the production that conforms to the trend of environmental protection and adopts new advanced environmental protection production technology. After China joined WTO, it made a preliminary attempt in the production of green agricultural products and achieved good results. According to incomplete statistics, at present, the total output of green food in China has reached more than 65.438+million tons, with a base of more than 40 million mu and an output value of more than 65.438+0 billion yuan. The export of these green foods has not been returned.
In the process of production, processing, packaging and transportation of agricultural products, the whole process of quality control technology is implemented, the quality supervision, inspection and testing system of agricultural products is established, and the agricultural quality standard system in line with international quality standards is established.
Reform the foreign trade system of agricultural products, further expand the import and export management rights of agricultural products production enterprises, vigorously develop agricultural industrialization management, and enable export enterprises to control the quality and environmental protection standards of agricultural products from production, processing to packaging and sales.
Establish and improve intermediary organizations such as trade associations and agricultural product exporters' chambers of commerce, and reflect the requirements and problems of enterprises through them, collect the information needed by enterprises, and become a platform for information exchange and release of green standards and technological achievements of agricultural products export. In addition, intermediary organizations should also coordinate the relationship between enterprises in the industry, negotiate with relevant foreign departments in the role of non-governmental organizations, and provide quality services for industry members.
Reform the rural land system. Including reconstructing the farmland property right system and clarifying the land property right; Establish a social security system for contracted land to protect the fundamental interests of farmers; Establish a land use right transfer system to realize agricultural scale and industrial management.
Increase agricultural input through tax incentives, financial subsidies and financial support. Improve the rural financial system, increase financial subsidies and implement tax relief for farmers, green agricultural management enterprises and green agricultural technology development units that produce green agricultural products; Providing credit support to rural credit cooperatives and agricultural development banks; Encourage and support potential green agricultural enterprises to go public through the second board market and obtain financial support from the capital market.
In view of external factors
According to WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Quarantine Measures for Animals and Plants, China's "green trade barriers" will be established rapidly, and the domestic legal system of environmental protection trade will be gradually established and improved. At the same time, actively promote the ISO 14000 new environmental management system. The introduction of Green O 14000 series international environmental standards is to standardize the behavior of enterprises and other organizations, thus saving resources, reducing environmental pollution, improving environmental quality, and promoting the export of agricultural products and sustained and healthy economic development.
Actively participate in the formulation of international green trade rules and establish an information communication mechanism with foreign trade management departments. The government should actively carry out "environmental diplomacy" and participate in the negotiation of environmental clauses in international environmental conventions and national multilateral agreements. In international multilateral trade organizations, we should give full play to the role of big trading countries, strengthen coordination and cooperation with developing countries, formulate some international environmental protection standards that are beneficial to developing countries or developing China countries, or attach safeguard clauses to some international standards to protect developing countries from discrimination by developed countries in international trade.
Actively negotiate with other countries, strive to establish an effective bilateral or multilateral informal coordination and communication mechanism, so that China can obtain the new environmental protection standards of importing countries as soon as possible, promptly notify relevant enterprises and exporters to take remedial measures, and estimate the impact on the country and the speed of reaching the new standards, negotiate with importing countries, and strive for the implementation standards and time schedule in favor of China.