Making use of the advantage of backwardness is the first choice strategy for developing countries to catch up with developed countries and develop their own economy. Only by proceeding from our own actual situation, recognizing our own strengths and weaknesses, fostering strengths and avoiding weaknesses, and adopting corresponding economic development strategies, can we gain the advantage of backwardness and realize rapid economic development.
[Keywords:] the advantages of latecomers have developed by leaps and bounds
First, an overview of the advantages of backwardness
The advantage of backwardness refers to the favorable conditions or opportunities formed by the relatively backward and slow economic development of late-developing countries and regions. The content of latecomer advantage generally includes two aspects: technology and system. The technological advantage of late-developing countries lies in the technological gap between late-developing countries and early-developing countries. The greater the gap, the greater the potential energy. The advantage of institutional backwardness refers to the institutional learning of the late-developing countries from the early-developing countries, that is, the gains and benefits generated by imitating and learning various advanced systems and improving them through localization.
Alexander Gerschenkron, a famous American economic historian in the 20th century, explicitly used "advantage of backwardness" for the first time to express the catching-up potential of backward countries to advanced countries. Through the study of European economic history, gerschenkron put forward the hypothesis of backwardness advantage in the paper "Looking at Economic Backwardness from a Historical Perspective" published in 1952, that is, economic backwardness has a positive effect. He believes that backward countries do not necessarily have the preconditions for economic development of the first-developing countries, but can replace these preconditions with some substitutes to achieve economic development. He also believes that the greater the relative backwardness, the greater the substitution role of the state. In backward countries, if the government does not assume its due responsibilities, the opportunities for industrialization will disappear.
Second, the advantage analysis of China's trade development.
As a typical late-developing country, China's economic development achievements have attracted worldwide attention. In recent years, the development of trade is more obvious, and the advantage of backwardness has played an important role in promoting it. The following analyzes the development of China's trade from two aspects: the system and the advantage of technological backwardness, and analyzes the problems existing in the development process.
1. Analysis of institutional advantages. Although there may be many reasons for trade growth, institutional change is undoubtedly one of the most important factors. Because the efficiency analysis of the system is difficult to quantify, here we make some qualitative judgments on the efficiency of the trading system.
(1) Decentralize and make profits, so that enterprises have the right to operate independently and become real trade subjects. The decentralization of enterprises' import and export management rights has intensified the competition among foreign trade enterprises, brought about the improvement of the overall operating efficiency of trade, and improved the new level of division of labor in various industries, and the economic benefits of the whole society have leapt to a new level. With the establishment of China's enterprise system and the increasing play of market functions, economic efficiency is constantly improving in Pareto.
(2) Effective allocation of resources and optimization of industrial structure. More and more standardized protection methods are in line with international practice, giving different degrees of protection to different industries and different stages of industrial growth. Although the overall protection level may not be lowered at the beginning of the reform, replacing the invisible planned protection with relatively explicit protection is itself to reduce costs and improve efficiency. At the same time, preferential policies to encourage exports, such as export tax rebates and export subsidies, are used to offset the distortion effect caused by protection, which is the characteristic that the trade system and trade strategy tend to be neutral. The foreign trade reform has promoted the efficiency of China's resource allocation, which is clearly reflected in the fact that the price of China is gradually approaching the world, and China's export products are more and more truly reflecting China's comparative advantage.
Although the advantage of backward system is gratifying, there is still a puzzling problem of attaching importance to technical imitation and ignoring institutional imitation in the process of learning and upgrading. Based on the complexity and sensitivity of institutional imitation, China's economic development relies too much on technical imitation. Just as Yang Xiaokai put forward the theory of "advantage trap of backwardness", due to the advantage of technological backwardness, immediate economic benefits have been achieved, thus delaying the pressure of institutional change and damaging the long-term economic development benefits. At present, the inefficiency of China's system has become a bottleneck restricting economic development and further exerting the advantages of backward technology.
2. Analysis of technical advantages. In the past 20 years, China has introduced technology through technology licensing, consulting, technical services, cooperative production and complete sets of equipment or key equipment, and adopted the policy of introducing foreign capital and encouraging foreign direct investment, and absorbed a certain technology by using the technology diffusion effect, thus promoting China's economic growth and enabling China to achieve a certain degree of leap-forward development.
(1) The domestic technology is supplemented, and the industrial competitive advantage is enhanced. The introduction and imitation of foreign advanced technology and the technology brought by foreign direct investment have filled the gap of domestic technology, thus improving the competitiveness of various industries in China. For example, the automobile industry in China, after China's entry into WTO, all the top ten multinational automobile companies in the world entered China. Twenty years ago, Shanghai Volkswagen and Guangzhou Honda started joint production by assembling CKD, and now they have launched their own brands Roewe and Fit. In recent years, China has almost become the automobile market with the highest frequency of new models, and the overall price is also in line with international prices. The huge spare parts system formed in the past 20 years has also greatly reduced the investment cost and procurement cost of independent brands and gained the world competitiveness of going abroad.
(2) Foreign trade takes off. Foreign direct investment is one of the sources of China's technological progress, which is closely related to the rapid growth of China's export industry. The increasingly active trade activities of foreign-invested enterprises have become the main growth point of China's foreign trade, and the trade volume has increased from 4.04% in 1986 to 58.57% in 2006. With the rapid increase of the proportion of foreign-funded enterprises in China's foreign trade, the growth rate of foreign trade of foreign-funded enterprises far exceeds that of China's total foreign trade. It can be inferred that the substantial growth of foreign trade of foreign-funded enterprises makes their contribution to the increment of China's foreign trade extremely prominent.
From 1982 to 2000, the total factor productivity of China increased by 1.66%, of which 80% was contributed by technological progress and only 20% by efficiency improvement. It also reflects the grim situation facing China's economic development. At present, the contribution rate of China's efficiency improvement to economic growth is so low (although China's annual import and export trade volume is huge, there are few high-tech trade products, which has not played a great role in China's efficiency improvement), which shows that there are quite serious problems in the development of China's late-comer advantage. The skyrocketing housing prices in China in recent years are mainly due to the low economic efficiency, insufficient development of high-tech industries, and a large number of social hot money can't find the investment direction, and they are competing to invest in real estate, a non-productive industry with a large profit return rate, which is precisely the main reason for the "East Asian crisis".
In a word, if China wants to give full play to its advantage of backwardness in today's international economy, it can learn from the experience and lessons of other countries, establish a harmonious society, improve the legal system and establish a sound market economic system; In terms of technology learning, we should pay more attention to the digestion and absorption of technology in the process of introducing learning, and at the same time vigorously advocate technological innovation to realize the leap-forward development of China's economy.
Policy Adjustment of New Trade Protectionism and China's Trade Development
Since 1990s, western developed countries have adjusted their new trade protectionism policies, which are mainly reflected in seeking more legal protection under the multilateral trading system, re-emphasizing import protection, shifting from explicit protection of non-tariff measures to implicit protection, and shifting from simple trade policies to economic and competition policies. These adjustments have had a far-reaching impact on China's trade development. How to deal with these adjustments has become an important issue for the sustainable development of China's foreign trade.
Keywords: new trade protectionism; Non-tariff barriers; Policy adjustment
In the 1970s, with the economic rise of Western Europe and Japan, the international competition faced by the American economy intensified, and the trade deficit and economic stagflation followed. The United States began to interrupt the trade liberalization policy that has been implemented since World War II, and instead implemented trade protection policies with non-tariff measures such as quotas and licenses as the main means, thus setting off a new wave of trade protectionism after the war and continuing to this day. In order to distinguish it from all kinds of trade protectionism with tariff measures as the main protection means in history, people call this trend of thought and its policy performance new trade protectionism.
I. Policy Adjustment of New Trade Protectionism
Since the emergence of new trade protectionism, until the 1980s, domestic products were basically pushed to foreign markets through non-tariff means such as quotas, subsidies and licenses. In the 1990s, with the acceleration of economic globalization, the unilateral protection measures of new trade protectionism were constantly retaliated by the international community. In the mid-1990s, substantial progress was made in the construction of the international multilateral trading system, and the "beggar-thy-neighbour" protection policy of new trade protectionism was increasingly constrained by the rules of the World Trade Organization. The new international background makes western developed countries adjust their new trade protectionism policies.
1. From unilateral protection to legal protection under the multilateral trading system
After the establishment of WTO, the traditional means of trade protection such as tariffs, quotas and licenses are restricted by WTO rules, and their functions are weakening day by day. While protecting their own interests, developed countries have to consider the international influence in policy means so as not to lose the benefits brought by the international multilateral system. Therefore, anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguard measures allowed by WTO have become the most important policy measures in all countries today. In recent years, anti-dumping cases in the world are on the rise: in 2006, there were 134 anti-dumping cases in the world. In the first half of 2002, WTO 1438 members made a final anti-dumping ruling against 43 members, while in 2006 it was 1 1. Countries have also legislated anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguard measures to legalize, institutionalize and legalize these policies.
2. From promoting exports to re-emphasizing import protection.
It is generally believed that the focus of the new trade protectionism award is to encourage exports. However, since the 1990s, market competition among countries has intensified and the remaining space is limited. Especially when the domestic economy is depressed, the protection of the domestic import market has been re-emphasized. Take the United States as an example 2 1 century, the economic growth rate of the United States dropped from 4. 1% in 1999 to 0.3% in 2006, so the American government strengthened import protection: (1) With the help of WTO rules, it abused anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguard clauses to protect the declining domestic textile industry. Since the establishment of 1995 WTO, the number of anti-dumping cases filed by the United States has soared, with 37 cases in 1998, 47 cases in 1999 and 2000, 74 cases in 20001and 75 cases in 2002. (2) traditional means to restore tariffs and quotas. In March 2002, the United States unilaterally decided to impose a 30% tariff on some imported steel products, and in June 5438+065438+ 10, it imposed quota restrictions on three kinds of textiles imported from China. (3) Building technical barriers to prevent the import of foreign superior products. According to statistics, in the first half of 2002, the imports of the United States and the European Union decreased by 6% respectively, while those of Japan decreased by more than 10%. In fact, the new protectionist countries have never taken a certain way to encourage exports or protect imports at a certain time, but used them in combination. In 1980, about18 of the products imported from the United States were protected. By the end of 1980s, this figure had reached 1/4. New trade protectionism is returning to traditional import protection.
3. From explicit protection of non-tariff measures to implicit protection.
New protectionist countries mainly adopt non-tariff barriers, but explicit non-tariff measures such as import licensing system, automatic export quotas, export subsidies and import quotas are increasingly strictly bound by WTO rules, while implicit technical barriers such as technical standards, quality certification, inspection procedures, environmental protection and national health standards are the best choices. From 1995 to 2002, the total number of notifications from TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement) and SPS (Agreement on Implementing Sanitary and Quarantine Measures for Animals and Plants) of WTO members reached 8507. In 2002, the total number of notifications of technical barriers to trade and sanitary and quarantine measures for animals and plants reached 1429, an increase of 6.4%. By virtue of their scientific and technological advantages and competitive advantages, developed countries have used some exceptions in the WTO agreement to raise various technical barriers, extending from the circulation field to the production and processing field, and also to the financial information and other industries, forming a complex and huge technical barrier system. There are more than 50,000 standards formulated in the United States, including technical regulations and detailed rules for government procurement, and more than 40,000 standards formulated by private standards bodies, professional societies and trade associations. The detailed technical standards formulated by the European Union for various imported products have also reached 654.38 million. In the early 1990s, Japan only implemented several pesticide residue detection indicators for rice imports, which increased to dozens in the mid-1990s, and now it has reached 123. The technical barriers of all countries are based on the TBT and SPS agreements of WTO, which are legal in form, diverse in name, wide in scope and flexible in means, especially under the banner of protecting human health and ecological environment, and have greater concealment, thus finding a more practical way out for new trade protectionism.
4. From simple trade policy to comprehensive economic and competition policy.
For a long time, the policy means of new trade protectionism, like traditional trade protectionism, mainly focused on border management and basically implemented trade policies, and the effective scope was limited to domestic territory. Since the 1990s, the global economic and social ties have been further strengthened, and the universality of trade issues is prominent, such as environmental protection and national health. Therefore, the protective measures of new trade protectionism have begun to extend from trade policy to the economic competition policy and even social policy of the other country. The main manifestations are as follows: (1) On the grounds of "fair trade", the European Union strongly opposed the merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in the United States in 1997, in order to compete for the international aviation market for EU enterprises by restricting the merger of the other companies; (2) control the other government's behavior of using administrative power to hinder competition, especially export subsidies, in order to eliminate unfair competition caused by the other party's discriminatory business policies; (3) interfering in other countries' economic policies. In September 2003, the United States and Japan strongly criticized our government for manipulating the "RMB exchange rate" and demanded RMB appreciation to reduce China's product exports; (4) Under the pretext of the other party's domestic social policy, ask the other party to implement the same social welfare, labor wages, social security and other standards as themselves. Recently, the United States began to enforce the SA8000 standard certification, linking labor rights with orders, requiring enterprises exporting products to the United States to bear the responsibility for the environment and stakeholders while making money. This is the first certification standard in the world to extend the trade protection policy to social responsibility, which directly affects the export of a large number of labor-intensive products to the United States.
Second, the impact of the adjustment of new trade protectionist policies on China's trade.
Since China joined the WTO, economic growth and export trade have remained strong. From 200 1 to 2003, the GDP increased from 9593.3 billion yuan to 1 16694 billion yuan, and the growth rate increased from 7.3% to 9. 1%. The total export volume increased from US$ 266,654.38+billion to US$ 438.37 billion, and the growth rate increased from 6.8% to 34.6%, which was in sharp contrast with developed countries and also caused fierce resistance from new trade protectionists represented by the United States and the European Union. Trade frictions and sanctions against China are increasing, and China has become one of the hardest hit areas of the new trade protectionism policy.
1. Frequent international anti-dumping and safeguard measures investigations have seriously affected the development of China's export trade.
Labor-intensive products, which account for a large proportion of China's export products, have always been sensitive products of developed countries, so China has always been the focus of international anti-dumping and safeguard measures. Since 1990s, especially after China joined the WTO, the new protectionist countries have paid more attention to import protection, and the anti-dumping and safeguard measures against China have intensified. On average, there are 1 cases against China products for every 6-7 cases of anti-dumping and safeguard measures in the world. According to statistics, since 1979, when the European Union conducted anti-dumping investigations on saccharin and salt exported from China, by the end of 2002 10, 33 countries and regions had initiated 544 anti-dumping and safeguard investigations on China's export products, including 502 anti-dumping investigations and 42 safeguard investigations, involving more than 4,000 commodities and affecting about 6,000 China products. 200 1, * * 17 countries and regions initiated 67 investigations on anti-dumping and safeguard measures against China, increasing by 55% compared with 2000, including 55 anti-dumping cases and 12 safeguard measures, increasing by 4 1% and 200% respectively, involving a total amount of nearly 65,438. In 2002, * * * 18 countries and regions initiated 60 investigations on anti-dumping and safeguard measures against China, involving nearly 124 billion US dollars; In 2003, China enterprises encountered 47 anti-dumping cases, involving 654.38+87.5 million US dollars. One after another, anti-dumping and safeguard measures have driven many top products from China out of the markets of importing countries.
2. China's trade development is facing an increasingly severe international environment.
After China's accession to the WTO, other members' unilateral restrictions on China will be gradually lifted according to WTO rules, and these members will in turn strengthen technical barriers to China's exports. In 2003, the EU officially banned the sale of 320 kinds of pesticides, involving more than 60 kinds of pesticide products in China. In addition to implementing the Multi-Fiber Agreement, the textile quota management in China has also established unilateral quota restrictions for China, and in the first half of 2004, six kinds of optical instruments, watches and clocks were cancelled. Japan increased the number of rice residue detection items imported from China from 56 in 1995 to 104. In order to prevent the sharp increase in imports of China products, South Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and other countries have formulated laws and regulations on China's safeguard measures in response to China's accession to the WTO, greatly lowering the filing standards, so as to avoid the global pressure brought by safeguard measures only in China. The United States is also preparing to amend the countervailing law to expand the scope of countervailing to non-market economy countries. There are indications that after China's entry into the WTO, the international environment facing China's trade will become increasingly severe.
3. China's terms of trade are deteriorating and the contribution of trade to economic growth is declining.
The new protectionist countries are basically China's main trading partners. They constantly take anti-dumping and safeguard measures against China products, which greatly restricts the export of China products and improves the competitiveness of China products in these markets, thus further aggravating the decline in the export price of China products. On the other hand, China's huge import market makes it difficult to reduce the import price, so China's terms of trade are deteriorating after once improving. From 1998 to 1999, China's export prices fell for two consecutive years, and the total index fell by 1 1.6%. The terms of trade with developed trading partners such as the United States, Europe and Japan showed an overall deterioration trend. In 200 1 year, China's exports to EU, USA and Japan increased by 7.65438 respectively. At the same time, according to the recognized contribution of trade to economic growth-net export contribution, since 1995, the net export contribution has once increased at 1997 and 1998. Although it rebounded in 2002, it is generally in a downward trend (see table 1 and figure 658)
Figure11995 —— China's net export growth in 2003.
Table11995 —— China's net export contribution in 2003 (unit: US$ 1 billion)
age
Total import m
Total export x
GDPY
Net export contribution (%)
1995
1320.8
1487.8
6989.03
2.42
1996
1388.3
15 10.5
8 153.87
1.5
1997
1423.7
1827.9
8978.4 1
4.48
1998
1402.4
1837. 1
9577. 18
4.59
1999
1657.0
1949.3
99 1 1.97
2.95
2000
2250.9
2492.0
10797.58
2.23
200 1
2435.5
266 1.0
1 1590.73
1.95
2002
2952.2
3255.7
1237 1.84
2.45
2003
4 128.4
4383.7
14099. 10
1.8 1
Source: China Statistical Yearbook, State Administration of Foreign Exchange and former Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. Over the years, dollar GDP has been calculated according to the average exchange rate of RMB in that year.
Third, China's response to new trade protectionism
1. Actively respond to trade frictions, adjust and optimize the trade structure, and safeguard the overall interests of the country.
In view of the increasing number of anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguard measures faced by China, we should give full play to the enthusiasm of enterprises, industries and governments, coordinate responses, adopt the principle of "whoever responds to the lawsuit benefits", encourage enterprises involved to actively respond to the lawsuit and save the market; Organize trade associations to respond to anti-dumping on behalf of the whole industry; On behalf of the country, the Ministry of Commerce helps enterprises negotiate with foreign governments. We should not only encourage enterprises to actively respond to foreign anti-dumping, but also urge enterprises to strengthen their awareness of self-prevention and apply for anti-dumping investigations in time. This requires us to study and apply WTO rules, learn from foreign experience, improve our own anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguard measures system, implement rational and restrained protection, and avoid serious damage to some domestic industries. 1997 China applied for anti-dumping investigation on newsprint originating in Canada, South Korea and the United States for the first time, and finally imposed anti-dumping duties of 9%-78%. On February 20th, 2000, China officially launched an anti-dumping investigation against dichloromethane originating in Britain, the United States, the Netherlands, France, Germany and South Korea, which basically put the past in a passive position.
2. Make full use of multilateral mechanisms to restrict trade protection in developed countries and improve China's trade environment.
Actively participate in the improvement of the operating mechanism of the WTO, make it develop in a more balanced direction, and focus on optimizing the protection rules allowed by the WTO. Undeniably, the policy adjustment of new protectionist countries is mainly aimed at developing countries and newly industrialized countries. Therefore, China should cooperate with developing countries, reach relatively favorable WTO terms in environmental protection, national health and international coordination of competition policies, make full use of the differential preferential treatment of developing countries in the WTO, and extend this treatment to the mainland of China. In view of the great gap between the central and western regions of China and the eastern regions in terms of economic growth level and per capita income. No matter what standards, it is still a developing region and should enjoy similar treatment as developing countries. Therefore, we can ask the EU to continue to grant GSP treatment to the central and western regions of China through negotiations.
3. Promote the strategy of "bringing in and taking out" and strive to improve China's terms of trade.
It is true that the neo-protectionist countries are the main export markets of China's products at present, but China's rapid economic growth and increasing import scale have increasingly become the important markets of the neo-protectionist countries. The integration of China's economy with the world economy is getting higher and higher. In 1995, the import volume was132.08 billion US dollars, and in 2003 it was 4128.4 billion US dollars. It is estimated that in the three years from 2003 to 2005, China's total import of goods will exceed 1 trillion US dollars, and most of China's imports are manufactured goods from developed countries. It has always accounted for more than 70% of the total import in that year, and the import growth rate is relatively large. 197, China imported137.5 billion dollars, and by 2002, the import volume reached 2,459.3 billion dollars, 2. 16 times of197. This is such a huge market. We can play the "import card" and strive for reciprocal concessions from developed countries in dealing with trade disputes, thus causing full competition among developed countries and improving China's terms of trade.
4. Improve China's technical standards to cope with more hidden technical barriers.
It should be acknowledged that technical standards, as the main means of new trade protectionism, are often international standards dominated by developed countries. At present, many domestic technical standards are still far below international standards, which is one of the reasons why our products have repeatedly encountered technical barriers. The technical trade measures taken by developed countries for reasons of national security and environmental protection are reasonable to some extent and cannot be considered intentional. Therefore, China must vigorously promote the international standardization strategy, strengthen enterprises' awareness of technological innovation and rules, speed up the process of international standardization of domestic technical standards and measures, participate in the formulation, revision and coordination of international standards, and make international standards reflect our opinions and requirements as much as possible; Enterprises must also attach great importance to and actively carry out international certification, and establish and improve quality management systems and environmental management systems. In addition, we should make full use of the exception clauses of TBT, implement the principle of non-discrimination and national treatment in terms of product regulations, standards, certification and quarantine system according to the agreement, resolutely resist the technical barriers to trade that neo-protectionist countries violate the agreement, and safeguard the equal treatment that Chinese products should enjoy in exporting countries and regions.
[References]
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[2] Liu: Sino-Western Trade, Nanjing University Press, 1997.
[3] Zhang Erzhen, Ma,,: "Trade and Investment Integration and China Strategy" People's Publishing House, 2004.
[4] Zhang Erzhen, Ma: International Trade, Nanjing University Press, 2003.
[5] Xie Wenjie: "On new trade protectionism", "Journal of the Central Party School * * *", No.4, 2003.