The Situation and Countermeasures Faced by China's Packaging Industry after Entering WTO

The bells of the new century have been ringing, and the dawn of the new century is showing us infinite light and hope. Today, economic globalization has become an unstoppable trend in world development. With the accelerating pace of economic globalization, China has reached the threshold of the WTO. After China's accession to the WTO, China's economic development will face greater challenges and challenges from economic globalization.
Economic globalization is actually a global market economy. Since it is a market economy, there is an irreversible objective law: Opportunities and risks are common, and opportunities are often born of risk. After China's accession to the WTO, the Chinese packaging industry will face what kind of situation, how to grasp the "WTO accession" to China's packaging industry development opportunities, promote the optimization of the packaging industry structure and improve the quality of packaging companies, and how to deal with "WTO accession" The challenges brought about by the development of China's packaging industry will be a major issue for how China's packaging industry can better survive and develop in the reform and opening up in the new century.
I. Opportunities and Challenges Faced by China's Packaging Industry after China's Accession to the WTO After China's accession to the WTO, China's packaging industry will face new opportunities for development, mainly in:
1. It is conducive to expanding trade opportunities and promoting the growth of China's export products, thereby driving the growth of product packaging and creating a market-pulling effect on the development of the packaging industry. The World Trade Organization (WTO), known as the "economic UN," has more than 125 members, and more than 90% of global trade is conducted between members of the "WTO". After "passing the WTO," China enjoys the benefits of a wide range of trade liberalization implemented by the "WTO" members and enjoys the most-favored-nation treatment and national treatment granted to other countries in the World Trade Organization for export products, which is conducive to expanding trade opportunities and increasing products. Exports drive the growth of corresponding product packaging. For example, in 1995, China’s total export of electromechanical products was US$ 43.86 billion, which was 25 times more than ten years ago and accounted for 29.5% of the total export volume. A large class of pillar products. As a developing country, China is accelerating the export of mechanical and electrical products is an inevitable choice and an important basis for expanding China’s foreign trade and becoming a world power. After joining the "WTO", China's exports of mechanical and electrical products will have greater markets and opportunities. The increase in the export of electromechanical products will inevitably lead to the growth of corresponding product packaging. In order to integrate our country's mechanical and electrical product packaging with the international market, we must develop green packaging that meets the requirements of environmental protection, and we must develop new substitute materials for wood packaging for mechanical and electrical products to meet the needs of the international market. This will also bring new opportunities for the development of packaging in our country.
2. It is conducive to the introduction of capital and technology to accelerate the technological progress of the packaging industry in China and optimize and upgrade the packaging industry structure. Since the reform and opening up, China's packaging industry has achieved considerable development. In 1998, the total output value of the national packaging industry has reached 180 billion yuan, accounting for about 2% of the national economic output value. Although the packaging industry has developed at a faster rate than industrial growth year after year, the benefits have not increased. The profit and tax rate of the gross output value of the packaging industry fell from 17.5% in 1985 to 6.7% in 1997. One of the important reasons is that the development of China's packaging industry is mainly to invest a lot of funds, equipment, and labor to promote the growth of output value, rather than relying on technological progress to improve efficiency. Overall, China's packaging companies are still lagging behind in technology, economic efficiency is poor. The packaging industry structure is still unreasonable, not to mention the optimization and upgrading of the packaging industry structure.
The Chinese market is an important part of the world market. After China's accession to the WTO, China’s market will be further opened to the outside world, foreign capital and technology will be more active in China, and technical and technological trade between China and other countries will become more common. Developed countries are eager to favor the Chinese market, and their products, capital, and technology need to find a way out of the market. In particular, packaging is an emerging industry with great market potential and strong attraction for foreign investors. This is more conducive to the introduction of foreign investment and foreign advanced technologies in China's packaging industry, and accelerates the technological advancement of the packaging industry and the optimization and upgrading of the packaging industry structure. The more open the technology is, the higher the industrial structure will be. The timely adjustment, optimization, and improvement of China's packaging industry structure will directly affect the international competitiveness and development initiatives of China's Booming Industry in the new century.
3. It is conducive to China's packaging industry to better participate in the international division of labor and international market competition, and promote the development of China's packaging industry in the competition.
After China's accession to the WTO, the degree of China’s participation in economic globalization cooperation will be further deepened. The development of China’s packaging industry will have an all-round open multilateral trade and cooperation environment, so that China’s packaging industry can better participate in the international division of labor and international market competition.
Market competition has always been the “invisible hand” that guides the development of industrial structures. After China's accession to the WTO, the competition between the industrial structure of the country and the country will help China's packaging industry to change its import and export status, make more effective use of the international division of labor, the rational allocation of international resources, and the common human knowledge. Its own advantages, promote the optimization of the packaging industry structure and the heightened industrial structure. In the process of the formation and development of new packaging industries, the ongoing competition among enterprises within the industry will help rapidly expand the scale of the new packaging technology industry, help develop new packaging products, help improve the quality of new products, and reduce cost. Fierce competition between industries will obviously cause changes in the distribution ratio of packaging resources among industries, manifesting as the rise and fall of new and old industries, which will help increase the utilization of resources and improve the input and output efficiency of the packaging industry. Promote the rationalization of the packaging industry structure. Only when the rationalization of the packaging industry structure can be achieved can the packaging industry structure be advanced. At the same time, China's qualified packaging companies can go abroad to implement transnational operations, and by joining the “WTO”, they can use their rules to change the extensive competition (fight price, number, and discount) for intensive competition (quality and Performance, service, reputation, marketable, standardized, green products, investment environment optimization, etc.)
On the one hand, “entering the WTO” will bring a rare historical opportunity for the development of China's packaging industry, but on the other hand, it will also face severe challenges for the development of China's packaging industry. Overall, it can be said that the challenge is greater than the opportunity. This challenge is mainly manifested in:
1. The new trade barriers - green barriers will put higher requirements on China's export product packaging.
In the future, in international trade, protectionism will use more high-tech standard measures to resist the import of foreign goods to protect its domestic market. At present, the "green barriers" that prevail in international trade are precisely those in some developed countries, especially in developed countries. Industrial countries, by taking advantage of the opportunity to protect their own environment, formulate very demanding environmental protection technical standards so that the goods of other countries cannot enter the markets of these countries. With the advent of the era of knowledge economy and the enhancement of global environmental protection and resource awareness, green products, green consumption, and green marketing will become the development trend of social production and consumption, and become the focus of all countries in implementing sustainable economic development. In the next 10 years, green products will dominate the world market. While product packaging is an integral part of the product, "green products" undoubtedly require "green packaging." The so-called "green packaging" refers to the conservation of resources, reducing waste, easy to use recycled or recycled after use, easy to decompose naturally, and does not pollute the environment of the packaging, "green packaging" is widely popular in developed countries. It can be seen that the green barriers will impose higher requirements on China's export product packaging. To expand the export of products, we must constantly develop green products and green packaging that are compatible with them. If packaging fails to keep up, it will restrict the development of China’s foreign trade exports and make it more difficult for China’s products to go to the international market.
2. The rapid development of modern science and technology and the increase in the technological content of industrial products pose a threat to the existence of traditional packaging products.
So far, China has not yet completely removed the "third-rate packaging" hat. The packaging products have low technical content, poor applicability, and low added value. At present, due to the emergence of surplus economy, the difficulty in product sales has been placed in front of the world, and the dependence of goods on packaging continues to increase. This poses a heavy burden on packaging and challenges the expansion of sales of goods. After entering the WTO, with the gradual reduction of tariffs, many foreign products pose a greater threat to domestic telecommunications, automobiles, electronics, and watches. The impact of foreign products not only competes in the inherent quality of the products, but also the competition in product packaging and decoration becomes more and more fierce. As the crafts, tourism products, gifts and export products, its packaging and decoration becomes even more important. On the other hand, with the continuous improvement of people's living standards, what people pursue is no longer the amount of consumption, but the quality of consumption and the upgrading of product features. How packaging adapts to changes in consumer attitudes raises further challenges for the use of packaging products. For example, in our country's food packaging, traditional methods used to use sacks and bags. Its characteristics are non-toxic, high turnover frequency and no pollution. However, the shortage of cotton and linen resources requires the import of a large amount of jute and cotton, which has a high cost and is far from meeting the needs. Today, a large number of plastic woven bags are used. It is a kind of macromolecule polymer material with high strength, low cost and corrosion resistance. However, plastic woven bags contain a small amount of additives harmful to the human body, packaging corn and other raw materials, people are still acceptable, and packaging foods such as rice, flour and other direct population is worry. Moreover, the permeability of plastic woven bags is poor and the food is easily degraded, so it is not suitable for long-term storage. In addition, most of the plastic woven bags are used once, adding waste and polluting the environment. Therefore, grain packaging must develop more scientific new packaging materials instead of plastic woven bags. Another example is a small packaged dish. Currently, a layer of polyethylene film is added to the expandable polystyrene foam tray, which is very convenient and hygienic. However, the gas and moisture produced by vegetables are trapped in the bag, causing the bacteria to multiply, causing the vegetables to turn yellow, reduce the freshness, and the shelf life is short, still can not meet the needs of the packaging of clean vegetables. The above situation shows that traditional packaging products will gradually lose their vitality. With the development of science and technology, traditional packaging materials and packaging products will be replaced by new and more scientific packaging materials and packaging products. If we do not speed up the research and development of new packaging materials, many of our packaging products will inevitably be eliminated by the market in the fierce international market competition after China's accession to the WTO.
3. The shift in trade liberalization and the influx of multinational companies will seriously impact the domestic market of the national packaging industry and packaging industry in China.
The foundation of a free economy is the World Trade Organization (WTO), which includes the liberalization of trade and investment, giving each other most-favoured-nation treatment, fair competition, protecting intellectual property rights, and establishing international trade rules. With the liberalization of goods and investment worldwide, the number of transnational corporations has increased dramatically. Multinational corporations have expanded their economic activities to all corners of the globe, and have become the dominant force in global economic globalization. They control global l/3 production, 80% Foreign direct investment, two-thirds of international trade, and more than 70% of patent and other technology transfers. In 1997, the total number of parent companies of multinational corporations in the world reached 530,000, the total investment stock reached 35 trillion US dollars, its global sales reached 9.5 trillion US dollars, and global exports were 2 trillion US dollars.
After China's accession to the WTO, there will be more influx of foreign packaging companies in China, and imported packaging materials and packaging products will also occupy more of the Chinese market, and domestic packaging companies will face greater pressure from competition. In the modern international competitive landscape, China's packaging industry can be said to be quite weak in its ability to compete, and it can achieve large-scale operations. Too few package companies with economies of scale have yet to form a batch of trans-regional, cross-industry, and cross-ownership systems. With large multinational corporations, this undoubtedly increases the risk of being squeezed out of the packaging industry's domestic market and the difficulty of developing international markets. The development of China's national packaging industry can be said to face a severe test. China's packaging industry must follow the path of economies of scale, and through the formation of a large enterprise group with strong competitiveness in cross-regional, cross-industry, cross-ownership, and multinational operations, can enhance the competitiveness of packaging companies and protect the health of China's national packaging industry. development of.
Second, countermeasures In the global environment of economic globalization, we must not only look at the world from China, but also look at it from the world.