The impact of green barriers on China's environmen

The impact of green barriers on China's environment and trade after China's entry into WTO Abstract: China's entry into WTO has made it face a series of new problems and challenges, among which green barriers are one. Starting from the essence and characteristics of green barriers, this paper analyzes its impact on China's environmental protection and foreign trade, and puts forward corresponding countermeasures

key words: green barrier environment and trade WTO

Introduction

China's accession to the WTO has brought new development opportunities to China's foreign trade. At the same time, the "green" trend of international trade has also brought unprecedented impact to the development of China's foreign trade. We have to face a new problem and challenge, that is, green barriers. This term may be no stranger to us. After China's accession to the WTO, many goods exported to foreign countries have been rejected or even destroyed. This is because China's goods have hit a wall on the green barriers of other countries, and other countries have also restricted the import of foreign goods through green barriers, thus protecting their own trade and economic environment. China is an environmental power with many environmental problems, some of which are even serious. The environmental and ecological damage is shocking. This paper will discuss how to use green barriers in the early stage of China's entry into WTO to deal with relevant foreign policies while protecting China's foreign economy and trade in the following two aspects

I. the meaning and essence of green barriers and their impact on China

I. the meaning and essence of green barriers

green barriers is the abbreviation of green trade barriers. It refers to that in international trade, the government of the importing country takes the protection of limited resources, ecological environment, human and animal and plant health as the name, takes the restriction of import protection trade as the fundamental purpose, and formulates the access restriction principle for commodities through legislation, such as complicated environmental protection conventions, laws, regulations, standards, signs, etc. its essence is a new form of international trade protection, and it is a new non-tariff trade barrier. Compared with other non-tariff barriers, it has the characteristics of concealment, formal legitimacy and apparent notarization, so it is easy to divert people's attention and is not easy to cause trade disputes. Its core is to protect trade in the name of environmental protection. Green barriers pose a threat to the exports of products and services of all countries in the world, especially developing countries with low environmental protection level. Green barrier has its own particularity: on the one hand, it can protect limited resources, environment and human health; On the other hand, for the purpose of protecting the domestic market, its implementation objectively restricts the import of some commodities. Its contents include green tariffs, green technology standards, green packaging, green health and quarantine system, green subsidies, etc

Second, the impact of green barriers on China

China's entry into WTO is a "double-edged sword", with both challenges and opportunities. At the beginning of China's entry into WTO, the big challenge faced by China is the problem of green barriers. In the past, China did not pay much attention to environmental issues, so that it hit a wall on the green barrier after China entered the WTO. It is mainly manifested in environmental issues and China's foreign trade

1. The impact of green barriers on China's environment

China is an environmental power and one of the largest developing countries. Many aspects are not perfect in the early stage of entering WTO. Especially in environmental protection, due to China's neglect of environmental protection in the past, many export commodities cannot meet international standards, so that after entering the WTO, a large number of export commodities are rejected by green barriers, and at the same time, some industries that pollute China's environment are "introduced". Its impact is mainly manifested in the following aspects:

⑴ the transfer of polluting industries to China

according to statistics, in the mid-1990s, China's more than 10000 enterprises using foreign capital, as many as 4000 pollution intensive enterprises; The total agreed investment is US $9billion, of which US $4billion is invested by pollution intensive enterprises, accounting for nearly half of the total investment. The data shows that developed countries use double standards to set up trade barriers on the one hand to prevent developing countries' goods from entering their international markets to meet customer requirements; On the other hand, transnational corporations are encouraged to transfer some polluting and damaging industries to developing countries through "international industrial transfer". In order to avoid the strict environmental protection laws and regulations and high environmental disposal costs of the host country, and to meet the needs of their own countries, some foreign investors take advantage of the fact that China's weak environmental awareness and relatively loose environmental quality standards are unable to create green barriers for them for the time being, and invest in the construction of enterprises with high pollution prevention and control costs and difficult to deal with. While investing in polluting industries, foreign investors take advantage of the import of raw materials to transport a large number of hazardous wastes from the host country into China for processing and disposal, and the imported technology and equipment are often eliminated or seriously polluted and prohibited from use in the host country. According to the data of the third industrial census in 1995, the number of enterprises, industry 6, power line output value and number of employees invested by foreign investors in China's pollution intensive industries have accounted for nearly 30% of the corresponding indicators of the three foreign-funded enterprises. These practices not only constitute damage to China's ecological environment, but also increase the difficulty of China's environmental governance and the implementation of international obligations

⑵ have a great impact on China's environmental industry

due to China's weak environmental awareness, the environmental industry has not attracted enough attention, so China's environmental industry is still in the pioneering stage. At present, the technical level of China's environmental industry is relatively low, which is mainly concentrated in the comprehensive utilization of three wastes. An industrial system basically based on end-of-life pollution control has not been established. The production of clean technology and clean products has just started, and environmental technical services are very weak. Therefore, the relative output value of environmental industry is much lower than that of other industries. Many countries with more developed environmental industries than China have formulated higher environmental standards and stricter environmental protection laws, so they take advantage of the gap between China and their own countries to sell a large number of outdated and accumulated environmental equipment, technologies and products to China through environmental trade, which further pollutes and destroys China's environment and forms "ecological aggression"; It will have a huge impact on China's environmental market and the impact will last for a long time. The majority of small and medium-sized environmental protection enterprises in China, due to their relatively backward technical level and lack of competitiveness, will be unsustainable in the fierce competition and will be gradually expelled from the market. The recently weak environmental protection service industry will be even more impacted. It can be seen that after entering the WTO, the environmental industry will undoubtedly become an important field for developed countries to compete for China's market

⑶ green signs increase the challenge

green signs, also known as environmental signs and ecological signs, are specific graphics issued by government departments or their authorized departments according to certain environmental standards to indicate that a certain commodity meets environmental requirements. First of all, the environmental standards on which the green mark system is based in various countries are inconsistent, and the evaluation methods are also different. Domenicali said that the car is planned to be launched in 2020 or 2021, and the product categories selected by various countries are biased, often only products produced by domestic enterprises and with comparative advantages in the international market are selected. Therefore, compared with enterprises in other countries, green signs may discriminate in application procedures. Secondly, some countries stipulate that foreign products without green marks are subject to quantity and price restrictions at the time of import. Thirdly, if an enterprise wants to obtain a green sign, it must apply to the relevant departments, and can be awarded an environmental sign only after it has been reviewed and meets the environmental standards. For China, which has a low level of technology and management, the standard of environmental labeling products is relatively high. In addition, applying for environmental labels also requires higher application fees, which undoubtedly brings additional economic burden and export costs to Chinese enterprises with a low environmental base

(to be continued)