According to the Workers' Daily, "At the end of 200 1, the China municipal government is making a long-term plan for1from 200 1 to 20 10/. At that time, it was proposed that China's import and export would exceed 1 trillion dollars in 20 10. But in fact, in June 2004, 1 1, that is, less than three years after the plan was formulated, this goal was achieved, which completely exceeded expectations. " At the "China Top 200 Foreign Trade Forum" held on June 23rd, Chai Haitao, president of the Institute of Foreign Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, recalled that China's import and export had increased by 20% to 30% every year since its entry into WTO, saying that "this is a very strange phenomenon".
However, he also admitted that "behind the beautiful data, there are some problems in China's foreign trade", such as extensive growth and the increasing international trade friction caused by it. The core topic of this forum is how to realize the transformation of China from "a big trading country and a small brand country" to "a big trading country and a big brand country" under the new situation of entering the post-w to transition period and accelerating the transformation of economic growth mode, and how to make China enterprises with processing and manufacturing as the main characteristics jump to the top of the pyramid with high added value in the world industrial chain.
Quickly integrate into the global industrial chain
Statistics show that during the five years from 200/kloc-0 to 2005, China's foreign trade exports grew at an average annual rate of 25.1%; The average annual growth rate of foreign trade imports is 24%, which is 14.2 and 12.7 percentage points higher than that in the Ninth Five-Year Plan period, respectively, which is the fastest period of foreign trade development in China. In the later period of the Tenth Five-Year Plan, China's foreign trade broke through the 1 trillion dollar mark for two consecutive years and became the third largest trading country in the world.
The "Top 200 Foreign Trade Enterprises in China in 2005" released by this forum witnessed the development of foreign trade in China. During the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, the total export value of China increased from $266 1 billion in 2006 to $762 billion in 2005, and the number of enterprises with export records also increased from 68,000 in 2006 to 54.38+0.44 million. In the same period, the total foreign trade import increased from US$ 243.6 billion to US$ 660,654.38 billion in 2005, and the number of enterprises with import records also increased from 68,000 in 2006 to 5438+013,000 in 2005.
With the expansion of the overall foreign trade scale, the selection criteria of the top 200 enterprises have also risen: in 2005, the minimum threshold for exporting top 200 enterprises has risen to 360 million US dollars, equivalent to 2.6 times of the 6,543.8+4 billion US dollars in 2006; At the same time, the minimum standard for top 200 importers has also increased from $6,543.8+$400 million in 2006 to $400 million in 2005.
Through these "beautiful data", Chai Haitao, president of the Institute of Foreign Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, noticed that the composition of China's import and export is undergoing three drastic changes in recent years.
The product composition has undergone a gratifying mutation. During the 10 years in 1980s and 1990s, the growth of China's foreign trade was mainly supported by light industrial products and textiles. The last 10 year of last century was mainly supported by the growth of traditional mechanical and electrical products; Since China's entry into WTO, the import and export of high-tech products with information industry as the core has been growing at a high speed, and the export of high-tech products has accounted for 30% of China's total export. Especially in the past two years, the composition of import and export products has been rapidly upgraded: the export growth rate of traditional so-called high-tech products such as small-screen color TVs, traditional optical cameras, clocks and watches, VCD has dropped by more than 30%, but the export growth rate of so-called high-tech products such as notebook computers, mobile phones and flat-panel TVs has been growing at a high speed, with an increase rate of 60% to 260%.
In terms of trade forms, the proportion of China's processing trade has increased in recent years, accounting for 55% of China's total exports.
In addition, the change of trade subject can not be ignored. State-owned foreign trade import and export companies stand out from the crowd. At present, state-owned enterprises export less than a fifth, and imports account for about a quarter. Foreign-funded enterprises have accounted for more than 58% of the total import and export; The proportion of private enterprises has increased from insignificant before to 2 1%.
Chai Haitao believes that all these changes show that China is rapidly integrating into the production and marketing chain of economic globalization, and China is becoming the main undertaker of global industrial chain relocation and manufacturing transfer.
The external environment tends to be severe.
"China has developed into a world-renowned trading power during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, and the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period is a crucial period for China to move from a trading power to a trading power." Zhang Lichuan, director of the General Statistics Department of the General Administration of Customs, believes that at present, we need to solve some new situations and problems in the field of foreign trade.
Statistics show that in 2005, China's exports ranked third in the world, accounting for 7.3% of the world's total exports, up 3.4 percentage points from 3.9% in 2000. "China's export growth is facing the pressure of increasingly saturated international market," Zhang Lichuan pointed out. "In 2005, among the countries with the largest global export volume 10, the export speed of China was much higher than that of the other nine countries, and it was also higher than the development speed of global export trade 13%. China's export growth space is increasingly restricted by the international market. "
"China's foreign trade development has gradually entered a period of high cost, and the pressure on labor costs and resource costs has gradually increased." Zhang Lichuan said that the low labor price has always been an advantage to support China's labor-intensive products. In recent years, the shortage of migrant workers in some areas shows that the labor price needs to be adjusted, and the practice of sacrificing the welfare of workers for the price advantage of export commodities needs to be corrected.
The increasing protection of international trade makes the external environment of China's foreign trade development more severe. "At present, China's anti-dumping products have developed from small commodities to large-scale superior products, and there are more and more trade frictions in clothing, furniture, color TVs, shoes and other commodities. China has been the country with the most anti-dumping prosecutions in the world for many years. " Zhang Lichuan said: "Because of the lack of intellectual property rights in China's export products, we have to deal with more and more international trade disputes despite our strong price competitive advantage."
The imbalance of foreign trade has intensified, and the RMB exchange rate has gradually entered an appreciation period. Enterprises engaged in foreign trade import and export face more exchange rate risks. This also poses a new challenge to the import and export trade of enterprises.
From a big trading country to a powerful trading country.
Zhang Yansheng, director of the Institute of Foreign Economic Research of the National Development and Reform Commission, believes that China urgently needs to "establish a mechanism to break or reduce the import and export restrictions imposed by protectionist barriers".
Chai Haitao, president of the Foreign Economic Cooperation Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, also believes that the biggest problem of China's foreign trade has always been mainly relying on quantity expansion and low-price competition. "For example, color TV sets, mobile phones and DVDs rank first in the world in output and first in export. However, exporters get very low comparative benefits and basically have no intellectual property rights. Whether it is proprietary technology, patents, trademarks or international sales channels, it is basically not in the hands of China's own enterprises. "
Many of China's export commodities are not suitable for international standards, and the lack of intellectual property protection means for China enterprises to protect their own brands and technologies overseas has brought great constraints to enterprises in the future international competition. For example, most enterprises in China are unable to fight back when they encounter patent encirclement and suppression.
In this regard, Chai Haitao believes that "the country proposes independent innovation, which is bound to be reflected in international trade: first, science and technology promote trade; Second, brand strategy; Third, the transformation and upgrading of processing trade; Fourth, expand service trade; Fifth, combined with the regional economic cooperation strategy of regional economic integration, try how China enterprises go out. "
In the past two years, China has had many happy events and often achieved good results in the world rankings. Needless to say, the second place in the Olympic gold medal list, the penetration rate of higher education has actually surpassed that of the United States. In the economic field, there is even better news: for example, the GDP growth rate ranks first in the world for many years, the steel output ranks first in the world for nine years, and the growth rate of the securities market ranks first in the world. Now, there is good news from the field of foreign trade. During the period of 1-1.038 trillion US dollars in 2004, China's total import and export value reached1.038 trillion US dollars, which is the first time that the total foreign trade exceeded1trillion US dollars one month ahead of schedule, and its ranking in world trade will also increase from the sixth in 2006 to the sixth. China has become a big trading country in the world. But people seem to feel a little bitter while tasting the sweetness of a big trading country-what price have we paid behind this big trading country?
Foreign trade reflects the degree of a country's opening up. The rapid development of trade is the historical progress of China's economy and society, and its achievements are obvious to all.
First of all, through foreign trade, although we have not introduced many core technologies, we have introduced the materialized results of the latest technologies. With the rapid popularization of computer, network, mobile phone and other electronic products in China, the network has become an important tool for production and life. If all this starts from the foundation, I wonder how long it will take to reach today's level. Regrettably, the core technologies and standards of high-tech products such as computers and networks are still in the hands of foreigners.
Secondly, through foreign trade, although we have not reached the living standard of developed countries, we have learned a lot of western lifestyles, which have improved our material life and enriched our spiritual life to some extent. Without the introduction of foreign capital and the great development of foreign trade, we can't realize the electrification and modernization of family life so quickly, and we may not even know what karaoke and disco are, although it has also led to the increase of pornographic activities and social security problems.
Third, I experienced the benefits of comparative advantage. According to the classical trade theory, as long as a country has a comparative advantage in resource endowment, it can participate in the division of labor and gain the benefits of international trade. Where is our comparative advantage?
First, under the premise of local government pricing and performance appraisal, China has a "comparative advantage" because of its cheap land and other resources. Judging from the export situation in the first three quarters, the export of processing trade was $2,288.1billion, accounting for 55% of the total export of $465.438+0.624 billion, and the processing trade was dominated by foreign enterprises. In the process of striving for foreign investment, local governments make concessions for land prices, which is a secret compared with tax relief. According to relevant data, before 2004, even in Suzhou, a foreign capital-intensive area, the high growth brought by direct introduction of international capital was at the expense of consuming a lot of land resources. According to the current demand of Suzhou's economic growth, about 60,000 mu of new project land is still needed every year. As long as Suzhou's GDP increases by 1 percentage point, it will consume 4000 mu of land. According to the results of the national land use change survey in 2003, the cultivated land area in China decreased by 2% in one year!
Second, under the condition of backward living standards, environmental pollution is low-cost, even at no cost. The new performance of listed companies on GEM was exposed by the media because of pollution. China's southeast coast and Jiangsu are one of the most developed regions in foreign trade economy, but some export enterprises are seriously polluted in the production process. For example, a chemical enterprise in a town in northern Jiangsu is a big taxpayer because all its products are exported. However, the author personally saw that the greening wastewater of the enterprise was directly discharged into rivers or farmland, and the person in charge of the enterprise and local residents also admitted that wastewater and exhaust gas must have an impact on health. Zhang Hanlin, dean of the World Trade Organization Research Institute in China, university of international business and economics, said: "The expansion of exports of some products, especially resource-based products, has also brought enormous environmental and resource pressures to China."
Third, in the most populous country, labor is cheap. The export of processing trade accounts for 55% of the total export, which shows that the technical content and added value of China's product export are very low. Generally speaking, high growth still mainly depends on the expansion of export volume, rather than improving commodity quality and increasing added value. According to 192' s statistics on the value and physical quantity of main export commodities, the physical quantity of 124' s export commodities increased faster than the value, accounting for 64.6%. When we compare our competitive advantages, we also repeatedly emphasize the important factors of cheap labor in China. Although China is the most populous country in the world, the labor force is also the most precious first resource. Some experts pointed out that if we don't change the export model that relies too much on price competitiveness, China will inevitably fall into the so-called "comparative advantage" that relies too much on cheap labor. The consequence will be to sacrifice the welfare of domestic workers, worsen the pattern of widening income distribution gap in China and affect the stability and development of the whole society.
Japan is a country with high dependence on foreign countries. Its economic take-off in 1960s and 1970s depended on opening to the outside world, foreign trade and foreign investment, making it the second largest economic power in the world. The most successful experience of Japan's opening to the outside world is that it has learned the most advanced science and technology in the world and transformed it into its own skills in the process of foreign trade and foreign capital introduction. Therefore, even though Japan's economy has been declining for more than a decade, it has not shaken its position as the world's second largest economy, which is particularly worthy of our deep thinking. Recently, our government strongly advocated the transformation of economic growth mode to sustainable development, and began to realize the problems existing in foreign trade, which brought hope to the future of China. However, the behavior of local governments has always been an uncontrollable factor because it involves institutional issues.