| Tariff, originating from the earlier national tax revenue, is produced and developed with the development of commodity production and the continuous expansion of commodity circulation field. In the historical development, with the change of international trade relations and internal and external politics and economics, the form and content of tariff is continuously developed and enriched, with its roles continuously changing. Tariff has the three major roles of finance, protection and regulation, of which finance is the basis, protection is the purpose and regulation is the measure. The tariff theories emerge and are continuously developed as tariff develops, guiding the government of every country to establish its own tariff policy according to its national situation and the need of economic development in the different historical period. The international tariff theories are mainly divided into the theory of free trade policy and the theory of protective tariff policy, both of which have their own supporters and are put into practice by different countries in the different period. The tariff policy, as one of the important national policies, is the concrete representation of national economic policy, political policy and social policy in the activities of foreign trade, interfering in the foreign economic and trade activities mainly by some measures such as collecting, reducing or remitting duties of imported and exported cargoes, etc., and giving an impact on some aspects such as the national financial revenue or the national economic development in order to represent the need of the national political, economic, and financial as well as industrial development policies. The tariff policy of China is established according to the need of China's socialist economic construction and under the direction of tariff theories and is continuously regulated with the change of internal and external political and economic situation. At the primary period of the founding of the People's Republic of China, under the imperialist economic blockade, our country carried out the protective tariff policy, primarily establishing industrial and agricultural production system of the complete departments. After 1979, China carries out the opening policy to the outside world, with the tariff policy focusing on promoting international trade and being helpful to the national economic development, taking an active part in international division of work, making use of foreign funds, referring to advanced foreign technologies to develop production, making efforts to develop international trade and increasing imports and exports. In the country, the reform of the economic system is carried out, transferring from the past planned economic system to the socialist market economic system. In December 2002, China entered the WTO, and the Chinese government regulated the tariff policy once again in order to adapt to the rules of the WTO.The tariff policy of our country plays important roles in the construction of socialist modernization, but has also some problems. There are the following three problems in the current tariff policy of our country:The first is the financial role of the tariff is excessively strong. At present, our country is in the primary period of the socialist market economic system, in which the central finance is still in very heavy burden, and depends much on the tariff, with the customs revenue occupying 1/4 or so of the central financial revenue, whose financial role is strong. In order to assure the full play of the financial role of the tariff, the Chinese government always keeps relatively high level of tariff while establishing the tariff policy. However, the high level of tariff, on the one hand brings about the problem of rampancy of smuggling, which causes the serious social and economic problem; on the other hand increases the consumptive cost and results in the reduction of national welfare. The second is that there exist a great number of defects in the regulative role of tariff. To r... |
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