Abstract: In recent ten years, the global trade volume has achieved amazing leap-forward growth, and the relationship between free trade and environment has become increasingly acute. On the one hand, many developed countries use unequal trade and investment means to grab a lot of strategic resources from developing countries, but it has caused serious imbalance in the ecological environment of these countries; On the other hand, the blind pursuit of trade expansion, capital accumulation and industrialization has actually aggravated the deterioration of the global environment. The "squeezing" restriction of environmental effects on trade has increasingly become the focus of international trade development. In this context, introducing environmental variables to promote the sustainability of trade strategy has become an inevitable way to realize the scientific development of China's foreign trade.
Keywords: international trade, trade environment, trade strategy
First, the environmental impact of trade.
Traditional trade theory and practice often focus on the poor trade volume and national welfare, and often ignore the important variable of environment, such as Ricardo's theory based on comparative interests and H-O's theory of factor endowment, without considering the environmental externalities that trade may cause. According to these theories, free international trade will realize Pareto economic efficiency, meet social needs and improve national welfare. However, this view is only reasonable under static conditions without market failure, and the negative environmental effects that may be caused by joining trade activities are much more complicated. Research and practice show that under certain conditions, a country's trade activities with a certain comparative advantage may bring environmental damage to other countries. For example, cutting down forests in the upper reaches of rivers to promote the export of forestry-related products will cause land desertification and soil erosion, seriously damage the environment on which export-oriented agriculture in downstream countries depends, lead to beggar-thy-neighbor, and undermine the foundation of international trade development. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the impact of trade on the environment is mainly concentrated in four aspects: product effects related to the exchange of products and services; Scale effect related to the expansion of market and economic activities; Structural effects related to the distribution and intensity of production and consumption activities; Regulatory effects related to trade policy and environmental policy. Therefore, these impacts will have a long-term and short-term lasting impact on the regional ecological environment, and then adversely affect trade interests and national welfare.
Taking exports as an example, the possibility of industrial pollution density decreasing is limited, but the export growth elasticity is relatively large, and the negative scale effect is often greater than the positive structural and technical effects. Under a certain level of productivity development, a country's excessive export is often detrimental to the environment. For example, the cross-border trade of resource products is often based on unreasonable or overexploited resources, and the blind export of wildlife resources and mineral resources products is more likely to destroy the balanced ecological environment. However, the current trade in genetically modified products is increasingly proved to hide many environmental risks. In addition, from the perspective of trade policies of governments, the prominent green barriers and environmental tariffs in international trade today, on the one hand, reflect the new form of trade protectionism, on the other hand, reflect that inappropriate trade activities will endanger the health and safety of human beings, animals and plants, and the sustainable development of the global ecological environment.
Second, the environmental dilemma in China's import and export trade
(1) Environmental issues in trade and export
Since the reform and opening up in the early 1980s, China's export trade has grown extremely rapidly, and its dependence on exports has remained at a high level. However, for a long time in the past, the one-way demand for foreign exchange earned by export prompted China to implement the quantitative model of high input, high consumption and low efficiency, which caused shocking waste of resources and environmental damage.
1, destroying biological resources
As far as foreign trade export is concerned, due to environmental pollution and the destruction of ecological balance, the number of some biological resources has been greatly reduced due to blind and uncontrolled killing and exploitation, and the quality of related derivatives has declined. The export sources have been or are on the verge of exhaustion, such as blindly exporting wild animals and plants, which has destroyed the regional ecological balance and seriously affected biodiversity; It also leads to land desertification and desertification in producing areas; However, the export of precious Chinese herbal medicines has caused more serious damage to resources. Ginseng, Eucommia ulmoides, Gastrodia elata and Amomum villosum in some areas are on the verge of extinction due to over-excavation.
2. Loss of mineral resources
Blind export of mineral resources leads to blind exploitation, which not only destroys precious mineral resources, but also makes the ecological environment deteriorate sharply. Some minerals release toxic or radioactive substances during mineral processing, which seriously pollutes and threatens the environment and finished products. On the one hand, resource-intensive products consume more energy in the production process, and the input of natural resources is higher than the output level, making the originally scarce resources even scarcer. On the other hand, highly polluting products are often uneconomical in the production process, but the export of such products as chemicals, pesticides, tanning, printing and dyeing accounts for a large proportion of the total export, especially some export-oriented township enterprises blindly develop the export of highly polluting products, which has caused serious hidden dangers to the ecological environment.
(2) Environmental problems in trade import
1. Import of resource-consuming products
According to national statistics, in recent years, the total amount of primary products in China's imported goods has decreased in fluctuations, while the import of related raw materials such as fossil fuels and lubricants has increased in both absolute quantity and share; In particular, the import of oil and natural gas industrial products has increased rapidly. Since 1993, China has changed from a net exporter of oil to a net importer. With the increasing demand for oil and gas, China's dependence on the international crude oil market is increasing. According to the latest estimate of the International Energy Agency (IEA), by 20 10, China's oil import will reach 80 million to 654.38+billion tons, with a net import rate of 4 1%. This trend will not only have a great impact on domestic trade, but also aggravate the environmental problems in China.
2. Import of pollution-prone products
The import of HCFCs, air conditioners and refrigerators using HCFCs has increased the environmental pressure in China, especially in China. In addition, imported fertilizers and plastic films have caused new secondary pollution. In particular, nitrogen fertilizer is easy to make surface water eutrophic, cause red tide and threaten the ecological balance of offshore areas, and plastic films that eventually lose agricultural value are difficult to decompose in nature, forming white pollution.
3. Transfer and import of wastes
In recent years, it is quite serious for developed countries and regions to transfer wastes to Chinese mainland in the form of direct trade. In 2006, imports from the United States, Japan and Hong Kong accounted for 265,438+0.3%, 7.8% and 65,438+065,438+0.3% of the total imports respectively. It is also reported that Britain alone exported 36.2 tons of toxic waste to China in 2003, with a value of about115500. These toxic wastes are various, mainly non-ferrous metal residues, batteries, old clothes and even radioactive wastes. Their regeneration process has caused great pollution to the environment where they are used.
In addition, some foreign enterprises import products, technologies and equipment that are eliminated from abroad, seriously pollute the environment and are forbidden to use, trade in the old ones and transfer them to China through investment. This kind of investment is essentially another hidden way of transboundary movement of toxic wastes, which has also seriously damaged the ecological environment of China.
Third, China's environmental strategy for the development of trade science
In order to realize the sustainability of China's trade development, we must introduce environmental variables appropriately and bring environmental factors into the scope of government's trade policy planning. At a time when the contemporary global trade environment is undergoing profound changes and the "green tide" is surging, environmental effects are particularly urgent for promoting the sustainable development of China's foreign trade.
(a), the establishment of environmental export orientation, the full implementation of environmental standards system.
The scale, speed and quality of export are related to a country's balance of payments and industrial competitiveness. Under the realistic conditions that China's exports are facing a persistent "rigid" surplus, but the overall added value is not high, and frequently encounter "green barriers" and dumping lawsuits, enterprises must completely reverse the traditional concept of environmental circumvention, establish environmental export orientation, and introduce more environmental quality factors into export products to make them one of the core competitiveness of products. The government and relevant quality inspection departments should actively guide all kinds of enterprises to take environmental protection as an important value orientation of production and operation, make quality indicators such as environmental indicators constitute the connotation of high-quality products, vigorously publicize and highlight the environmental advantages of high-quality brands, and promote the transformation and upgrading of relevant industrial departments by establishing a number of environmental "benchmark" trade products; In addition, efforts should be made to improve the commodity structure of export trade, upgrade environmental protection products to an important part of the national export industrial structure, and foster environmental economies of scale with the help of preferential policies such as finance, taxation and finance. [2] Give special policy support to the incubation and development of export-oriented green industries, and strive to form the fashion of enterprises and society collecting green information, making green plans, developing green products, engaging in green marketing, opening up green channels and developing green consumption.
In view of the prominent role of environmental standards in contemporary international trade, China must comprehensively strengthen the standard certification which is connected with the international environmental standards management system. First of all, actively implement the ISO 14000 international standard certification system, and complete the implementation steps of the green scheme for export products from design, production to recycling; Secondly, actively promote the environmental standard system, so that export products can expand their adaptability to environmental standards on the basis of environmental certification; Thirdly, vigorously expand cooperation with China's major trading partners in the field of label certification, promote multilateral recognition of environmental labels, strive to expand the right to speak internationally at the standard-setting level, and reduce unreasonable environmental barriers.
(2) Adhere to the concept of sustainable import and standardize trade and investment access.
Import is an important pole that cannot be ignored in a country's foreign trade system. Influenced by the historical industrial structure and traditional trade policies, there is a tendency of "emphasizing exports over imports" in China's trade activities, and the understanding of the strategic position and development level of imports is relatively weak, and the environmental concept in imports is rarely involved. In 2007, in view of a series of problems caused by the persistent trade surplus, the Ministry of Commerce clearly put forward the slogan of "expanding imports and optimizing the structure", and at the same time brought environmental factors into the scope of policy adjustment, which is of great significance to the comprehensive and rational development of international trade. Sustainable import requires the active introduction of environment-friendly products, technologies and equipment, especially pollution prevention technologies and facilities, which are conducive to improving the quality of the ecological environment, based on the strategic height of national environmental security and in accordance with national industrial policies and biological health standards, and has become an important driving force for the sound development of the environment in China; Establish a structure of imported goods that is conducive to environmental protection, resolutely ban the import of hazardous wastes, monopolize the ship-breaking industry and the import of waste materials and waste paper; Strictly prohibit the import of wild animals and plants harmful to the world's biodiversity; Strictly control the import of goods harmful to the ecological environment; Accelerate the ban on the import of controlled substances and their products that deplete the ozone layer.
Trade and investment is an important part of China's structure of attracting foreign investment, which is mainly used for the development, production, processing and export of trade products for import and export purposes. Due to the adjustment of industrial structure in developed countries and regions, the amount of foreign capital absorbed by China in this field has increased rapidly in recent years. Focusing on the domestic reality, China should put environmental factors in a more prominent position in the process of attracting foreign investment in the future, strictly control the entrance of attracting foreign investment, and encourage and guide foreign investment in industries and product production that are conducive to improving environmental benefits, such as clean energy, transportation, agriculture, organic food, ecological forestry and green packaging. Vigorously strengthen the accounting of environmental costs of enterprises, pay more attention to the coordination between environment and foreign capital, and make greater efforts to improve the environmental benefits of utilizing foreign capital, so as to urge China to attract foreign capital in trade.
(3) Establish an environmental tax system and cultivate environmental trade demonstration zones.
Many environmental problems caused by indifference to the environment in international trade activities are largely due to the publicity of the environment. Enterprises fail to incorporate environmental costs into the total cost framework of their production and operation, and lack incentives and motives for internalizing environmental costs, which leads to blind development of products with high consumption, high pollution, low private cost and high social cost under the stimulation of high profits. Modern tax system can make up for this deficiency to some extent. Economic theory and western practice show that tax has an effective leverage adjustment effect under the market economy, and environmental tax is a beneficial tax to correct market failure, eliminate externalities, promote sound development of the environment and guide enterprises to engage in environmental target production and operation. [3] Focusing on the requirements of the times of scientific development, China should start the environmental tax system as soon as possible, starting from the key pollution sources and the collection objects that are convenient for collection and management, and levy differential taxes according to the characteristics of the industry. In particular, it is necessary to strengthen the regulatory function of environmental tax on the production and operation of products that are not conducive to environmental trade, promote the internalization of environmental costs, and encourage enterprises to vigorously develop "clean production" and "green trade".
According to the economic forecast, the global environmental trade will reach 600-10 billion dollars in 20 10. Facing this trend and the present situation of China's environmental trade, choosing areas with good basic conditions to develop environmental industries and establish environmental trade bases can create achievements, accumulate experience, radiate at home and abroad, and strategically promote the overall development of environmental trade. In view of the fact that various economic development zones are increasingly becoming a large number of import and export trade production enterprises in China, the government should actively speed up the adjustment and optimization of industrial structure in the zones and promote the construction of environmental protection trade demonstration zones. It is necessary to establish the trade rules and regulations of the development zone, formulate the trade management law of green organic products, fully popularize the ISO 14000 environmental management system certification, cancel the preferential policies restricting pollution-intensive industries and projects, encourage sustainable trading enterprises to settle down and give special preferential treatment, such as tax refund support, ensure the priority of import and export management rights, and set up a "green channel" for export credit and product certification. Establish a feedback center and database of trade and environment information, collect and track relevant influential environmental protection measures of major international and China trading countries, integrate functional departments, trade associations, experts and scholars to study and evaluate the environmental protection system of the development zone, gradually form a benign mechanism of resource and environment commercialization, price rationalization, resource consumption and environmental damage compensation, and promote the sustainable road of foreign trade operation of enterprises.
(d) Expand the space for international cooperation and strengthen the initiative of environmental trade.
The sustainable development of trade is a common concern of the international community today, and it is also an important content of establishing a new international economic order. In view of the fact that sustainable development has become a national strategy, China should actively participate in bilateral and multilateral negotiations on trade and environment, make use of the stage of WTO, and strive to promote the conclusion of relevant trade and environment agreements; In environmental testing, we strive to make some professional inspection institutions with better qualifications pass international certification, obtain the authority to directly issue international green passes, and become full members of relevant international organizations. As the largest developing country in the world, China has the responsibility to promote effective international cooperation and prevent any activities that are seriously degraded or harmful to human beings and the ecological environment from being transferred to third countries, especially to prevent developed countries from transferring pollution-intensive industries and products to developing countries through trade channels, so as to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.
Especially in the face of environmental factors in international trade, China should not only adapt to green terms, actively adjust industrial policies and improve the international competitiveness of its products, but also unite with developing countries to resist the trade protectionism formulated by developed countries that does not conform to relevant international norms and engages in factual trade in the name of the environment, and insist that trade measures taken for environmental purposes should not become arbitrary discriminatory means in international trade. Green barriers should follow the principle of objective rationality and the implementation path. [5] This will help the international community to fully consider the actual situation of developing countries at the current stage of development, objectively understand environmental standards and their due compensation mechanisms, and better promote the steady development of foreign trade of developing countries.