Is China'S Shoe Company Ready For Russia'S Accession To WTO?

Is China ready for Russia's important economic and trade partner in the face of Russia's upcoming WTO entry?

As early as October 2004, China and Russia signed bilateral official documents concerning Russia's accession to the world trade organization.

Experts believe that entry into WTO will have a tremendous and far-reaching impact on all aspects of Russian social and economic life and the pattern of international trade.

Russia's market access and investment environment will undergo obvious changes, which will have a wide and profound impact on Sino Russian economic and trade cooperation, especially the economic and trade relations between the two countries.

However, it is believed that Russia's accession to the WTO will bring new opportunities and new competition and challenges to the expansion and deepening of Sino Russian economic and trade cooperation.

First of all, joining the WTO will reduce Russia's market access threshold and help Chinese enterprises expand the potential of commodity export.

Russia's import tariffs have been relatively high, but after joining the WTO, Russia must reduce the tariff level to 5% according to the WTO requirements.

To meet this requirement, the Russian government has adjusted and merged the names of imported commodities since January 1, 2001 and lowered the import tax rate.

This provides an opportunity to reduce import costs, expand export potential and enhance the share of China's traditional dominant commodities in the Russian market.

But when Russia's market access threshold is lowered, competition in its low-end product market will become more intense.

At present, apart from agricultural and sideline products, clothing, textiles, shoes, household appliances and so on are still our main exports to Russia.

For a long time, these products do not have other obvious competitive advantages except the price advantage in the Russian market. Many of these commodities can not be placed on the counters of regular large stores, boutiques, and exclusive stores, and can not enter the main channels of circulation, and they can only be sold in open-air markets all over the country.

After Russia's accession to the WTO, it opened its market to China and opened its market to other WTO members.

Chinese goods must compete with other members' products more fiercely.

Second, the improvement of the market environment after Russia's accession to the WTO will help Chinese enterprises to carry out various economic and trade activities according to international practice.

After joining the WTO, Russia must fundamentally improve and perfect the legal system in accordance with the rules of the world trade organization, increase pparency, strictly enforce the law, and organize economic and trade activities in accordance with international practices and market mechanisms.

This is beneficial for Chinese companies to declare, pay taxes, sell and settle accounts in a normal way, which is conducive to participating in fair competition and ensuring the legitimate interests of Chinese enterprises.

After accession to WTO, the corruption and inefficiency of the Russian customs and other foreign agencies will be treated, and the trade order will be rectified. With the gradual solution of "grey customs clearance", regular trade will gain new development opportunities.

At present, the Chinese and Russian governments have established a joint working group on standardizing trade order and have reached some consensus on the rectification of "grey customs clearance".

In the future, the two sides will resolve the issue of "grey customs clearance" through consultative dialogue and concerted measures within the framework of the agency, which is beneficial to the development of China's regular export trade with Russia.

Third, after joining the WTO, the Russian government will further enhance the protection of intellectual property rights and market economy, and the difficulty of introducing advanced technology in Russia will increase.

Compared with the western countries such as the US, Europe and Japan, Russia has fewer restrictions on technology pfer to China, but Russia does not really regard China as an equal partner in science and technology, and considers that the overall technological development level of developing countries, including China, is very low. In cooperation with such countries, Russia is actually a giver.

In the pattern of Russian foreign cooperation in science and technology, China is the fourth country after international organizations, CIS countries and developed countries.

After Russia's entry into the WTO, the awareness of intellectual property protection and market awareness will be strengthened constantly. The work of introducing Russian high-tech achievements will become more difficult and the conditions will be more harsh.

Now the Russian government's preventive measures are becoming more and more complete. Due to many years of economic crisis and shortage of scientific research funds, the invention patents and preliminary research results which are backlog in the hands of scientific research units and scientists are hard to easily flow abroad.

Fourth, the conditions for Sino Russian labor cooperation will be improved.

The export of Chinese labor force to Russia has always been one of the focuses of negotiations between the two sides.

The Russian government should consider solving the problem of unemployment in China. Secondly, it will be cautious about the large number of Chinese residents entering Russia.

Now that China has promised to solve the problem of China's export to Russia in a way acceptable to Russia, it seems that Russia's degree of opening the labour market to China is still limited.

Experts believe that for these opportunities and challenges, relevant departments and enterprises in China should plan ahead and work ahead of schedule, strive to avoid harm and profit and earnestly meet relevant challenges.

In June this year, China and Russia held a seminar in Beijing on the theme of "Russia's entry into WTO and the prospect of Sino Russian economic and trade relations".

Tsyplakov, Russia's chief business representative in China, was optimistic about the future economic and trade development of China and Russia at the meeting.

He said: "the investment between China and Russia is developing very well. A very important growth point is the border trade cooperation in the border areas of the two countries. In Russia, it is Siberia and the Far East, and China is the northeast region."