We attempt to establish a China Industrial Prospect Assessment Method to comprehensively evaluate the near-term, medium-term and long-term impact of WTO accession on the various sectors of the manufacturing industry. The main components of this method are: (1) an industrial development prospect assessment method against the background of WTO accession that can be universally applied to different industrial sectors so as to carry out horizontal comparison of all industrial sectors under the same coordinate system; (2) a combination of the study of short-term policy options with the study of long-term trends so as to broaden the horizons of our study and to accurately chart a long-term development orientation of various sectors of the manufacturing industry after WTO accession; (3) a definition of the orientation and basic principles of government policy adjustment in the future through the assessment of industrial development prospect against the background of WTO accession. II. Method and Indicator Selection for Assessing the Development Prospect of China""s Manufacturing Industry after WTO Accession Our basic idea about the method of assessing the industrial development prospect after WTO accession is to make, through a comprehensive assessment of the following six indicators, an overall judgment on the short-term, medium-term and long-term impact (both positive and negative) of WTO accession on various sectors of the manufacturing industry as well as on their development prospect. Following are the six indicators: 1.The characteristics of globalization (or internationalization). The characteristics of globalization (or internationalization) are meant to determine whether a specific industry""s research and development, manufacturing, procurement, sales services, investment, trade, financing and other operations have a tendency of globalization or internationalization. Such a tendency is to a very large extent determined by the foreign direct investments by large transnational corporations. In the perspective of WTO accession, we can come to such a judgment that the more distinctive an industry""s characteristics of globalization or internationalization are, the more likely such an industry is subject to the impact of WTO accession and the degree of such an impact is determined by the degree of domestic industries"" participation in globalization. This is mainly because if an industry has more distinctive characteristics of globalization, the scope and method of resource allocation of its industrial chain will have closer links with external economic activities. As a result, such a domestic industry is likely to be more severely affected by external factors. As to those industries that have less characteristics of internationalization or have more characteristics of localization, they are likely to be less severely affected by WTO accession because their links with external economic activities are not close. For example, we can say for certain that from a global perspective, the chemical industry obviously have more characteristics of globalization than the building materials industry or the timber processing industry. As a result, WTO accession is likely to have a more severe impact on China""s chemical industry than on building materials industry or timber processing industry. The impact here refers mainly to direct impact, including tariff concession, the removal of non-tariff measures, market access, investment liberalization and facilitation, the protection of intellectual property rights and other factors that are directly related to WTO rules. As to the industries that have characteristics of globalization, we need to specifically pinpoint whether these characteristics are manifested in the area of investment, or in the area of product and service trade, or in both.
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