21世纪我国对外开放应走可持续发展之路

China's open-door policy should follow a path of sustainable growth in the 21st century

二战后,世界经济得到了前所未有的发展,人类创造了惊人的物质财富,但与此同时,全球生态环境日益恶化,越来越对人类的生存和发展构成威胁。保护环境,实施可持续发展战略已成为国际社会的共识,其中,环境与贸易问题是各方关注的焦点。 环境问题对我国对外开放的挑战 1978年以来,我国对外开放取得了举世瞩目的成就,成为改革及国民经济发展重要的推动力。尽管我国对外开放与环境保护相互有一定的促进作用,但总的来说,这两个基本国策并没有取得真正的协调发展。

Global trade, foreign investment and environmental conservation are usually instrumental to each other, but under certain circumstances, they can also work against each other. Without regard to a sustainable growth as the prerequisite, foreign investment and trading can have serious negative effects on the environment. These environmental woes could far outbalance the economic benefits that foreign investment and trading can bring. At the same time, environmental preservation has also brought out new standards on trade and investment. In fact, many products areprohibited from foreign trading by the environmental laws. The following five "green-barriers" will have a major impact on international trading: the ever tightening international environmental protection treaties, the body of international environmental technology standards and regulations, the packaging and tagging requirements, the practice of merchandise inspection and quarantine, and the regulations on the production processes and environmental costs assessment. "Green-Barrier" will replace tariff barrier and general non-tariff barrier to become a major form of trade barrier.Although our "open-door" policy and environmental preservation efforts can be helpful to each other, generally speaking however, these two basic national policies have not been balanced in their implementation. Some products for export contaminated the environment during production; other imported products have negative effects on our environment as well. Most foreign invested enterprises have positive effects on the environment, but some of the foreign investors concentrate on the heavy-polluting industries, or participate in harmful waste material's imports, or transfer products technologies and equipment that are outdated, heavy-polluting, and often banned in their home countries. These foreign investors put serious pressure on our environmental preservation efforts. Almost all our exporting products have been or will be affected by various green barriers, which will become, in the long run, our exporting industry's most difficult barrier to break through in the 21st century.In order to balance the two basic national policies of door-opening and environmental conservation, we must: * Work out strategies that guarantee a sustainable growth; * Establish, as a theoretical foundation for the open-door policy, the broad competitiveness criterion that cover social, ecological and economical considerations; * Promote coordinated development of the various aspects of the open-door policy and reduce their negative effects on the environment; * Establish legislature/policy systems and their implementation mechanisms, on which a sustainable growth can rely; * Promote our international competitiveness with technology and Eco-awareness, and develop bio-tech food, environmental preservation products, green packaging, and other green industries; * Encourage imported technologies and equipment that are helpfulto the environment while strictly prohibit importing heavy-polluting products and technologies; * Absorb foreign investments with an eye on our long-term goal of sustainable growth; guide foreign investors into the geographic locations and industry sectors that are most beneficial to our goal of sustained growth; * First concentrate on the special economic zones, economic-technological development zones and hi-tech development zones, and build them into models of sustainable growth; * Transfer our redundant capacity industries with heavy-polluting or heavy consumption to other less developed countries; * Build China's own global companies with the guideline of sustainable growth; * Take advantage of the "double-edge" of the green barrier, actively utilize the conflict resolution mechanism of the WTO, break through this barrier but at the same time build up our own environmental protection system; * Export oriented industries must also follow the path of sustainable growth; * Strengthen international cooperation, promote multilateral talks on trade and environmental preservation issues, and sign re