| With the development of economical globalization and liberalization of trade, tariff barriers are weakening. Meanwhile, technical barriers to trade (TBT), which is in the form of technical standards, technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures, is becoming more and more powerful. Be affected by such a phenomenon, a lot of products have been hindered from being exported, and every industry has suffered from the restriction of TBT while the same happened on Chinese traditional medicine industry. Although the existence of TBT, in some way, it is reasonable because that, in order to guarantee national security, human life and health and animal and plant safety and to protect the environment, in international trade, there is a necessity for a boundary like standards to restrict the quality of imported products, excessive TBT can hinder international trade from developing. Because of its negative impact, this thesis studied TBT encountered by Chinese traditional medicine, analyzed reasons for such a phenomenon, and based on the results of the study and analysis, provided some countermeasures for government, industry association as well as enterprises.This thesis firstly discussed the status quo of export of Chinese traditional medicine. From the year of 2001 to 2009, the total sales of exportation increased from 558 million to 1460 million. It is obvious that even in the environment that the whole world was affected by financial crisis, exportation of Chinese traditional medicine is still increasing. Although there are various data which can illustrate that there is an increasing demand for herbal medicine, Chinese market share in the international herbal medicine market is only 3%, while the total sales of herbal market was 16 billion. In this 3% market share, about 80% are medicine raw material. In such a limit market share, Chinese traditional medicine exportation are mainly raw material, such a phenomenon cannot be compared with the name of the Kingdom of Chinese traditional medicine which has a history for 5000 year Currently, major markets for the exportation of Chinese traditional medicine are Asia, Europe and USA. Because of the similarity of culture, Asia is the first important foreign market for Chinese traditional medicine. According to the data from custom, every year the quantity of traditional Chinese medicine imported by southeast Asia accounts for 17 percent in the total number of exportation of Chinese medicine material. If this figure adds the quantity exported to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, it is 24 percent of the total number of exportation of traditional Chinese medicine. In American market, including Fu Fang Ku Qiaomai and other ten kinds of traditional Chinese medicine firstly past inspection of FDA and entered into American market in 1997. However., these ten kinds of Chinese traditional medicine cannot compete with the imported American medicine both in price and quantity. In recent years, there are 14 traditional Chinese medicine manufacturers have successfully obtained GMP certification of Australia and Germany. Even though Chinese traditional medicine has been sold in many countries and regions all around the world, it still encountered a lot of problems in the world market. The problems are:firstly, with the impact of the popularity of herbal medicine, large corporations like Johnson & Johnson, Smithkline, Bristol-Myers Squibb and others all start to invest money on research and development of herbal medicine, which brought severe challenge for research and development of China's Chinese traditional medicine. Secondly, after entering into WTO, every year there are a lot of Japan-made, Korea-made and Europe-made traditional Chinese medicine came into China, which was actually made in China or imported raw materials from China. In such case, the intellectual property right of Chinese traditional medicine is in danger. The last but not the least, Chinese traditional medicine has often encountered TBT. These three problems are the major ones which hinder the internationalization of Chinese traditional medicine.Next, the thesis elaborated the TBT encountered by Chinese traditional medicine. The TBT encountered by Chinese traditional medicine can be divided into four categories:barriers to registration, barriers to approval procedure, requirements on packing, labeling and trademark and green barriers. There are a lot of countries which have very strict registration requirements on importation of Chinese traditional medicine, and a lot of Chinese traditional medicines can only be sold after registered as health care products. However, even registering as health care products, it is still very difficult. Enterprises need to spend a lot of time, energy and money, as a result, they would not get the best opportunity and then lose their competitiveness in market. Except for barriers to registration, entering into developed countries and regions, there are also barriers to approval procedure. There are a lot of modern medicinal standards, such as Good Agricultural Practice for medicine materials, Good Clinical Practice, Good Laboratory Practice, and Good Manufacturing Practice and so on. These certifications include index from Chinese traditional medicine planting to production and processing, and there only a few enterprises have passed their approval procedures, while those who cannot get the certification are kept out of the market. Moreover, as for package, label and trademark, many countries have clear and strict requirements. Any medicinal products with package or label that does not meet the requirements would possibly be dealt with in three methods: being detained and asked for modification, being returned or being destroyed. Except for the above three kinds of TBT, Chinese traditional medicine also encountered green barrier. Green barrier refers to that by setting a series of overcritical environment-protecting standards in name of protecting resources, environment and people's safety and health, governments restrain the importation of products and services. Chinese traditional medicine is particularly easy to be influenced by green barrier. If there is no effective health management and control during the process of growing Chinese traditional medicinal materials, it is easy to appear the problem of excessive content of heavy mental and farm insecticide in inspection. These four kinds of TBT have made Chinese traditional medicine enterprises suffered a lot and brought a lot of negative impact on the export of Chinese traditional medicine:a lot of products cannot enter into or be forced to get out of market because they are not in line with technical standards in the target market. What is more, some developed countries have raised the technical standard, which has increased the export costs of Chinese enterprises and finally these enterprises lost their competitiveness in foreign market. Meanwhile, TBT has also brought some positive effects. First of all, manufacturers would have a good awareness on environment protection and secondly, in order to overcome TBT, enterprises have to rely on themselves'development and finally, the whole technical standard in China would be raised as well.In chapter five, major reasons for Chinese traditional medicine encountering TBT have been discussed. Firstly, the WTO rules and coordination mechanisms have some drawbacks which have result in the legality of TBT. The second reason is the cultural differences between the east and the west. Because of the differences in historical tradition, cultural background and mode of thinking, traditional Chinese medicine has some obvious differences with modern medical science and they belong to two different theoretical systems. The western countries are usually hard to accept the cultural philosophy of Chinese traditional medicine and then hard to accept the Chinese traditional medicine. The third reason is that being lack of special service system for anti-TBT of Chinese traditional medicine. There are various technical regulations and standards, while the assessment procedures are complicated and hard to control. However, there have been no special anti-TBT service systems specialized in Chinese traditional medicine now yet. The fourth reason is that the standard system in China is not complete enough and has some distance to the international standard. The fifth reason is the legal system in Chinese traditional medicine industry is not complete and perfect enough. Currently, there is no complete law system which is specialized in Chinese traditional medicine. As the major manufacturer, if there is no complete legal system for Chinese traditional medicine, it is hard to influence on the international society. The sixth reason is that comparing with foreign companies, producing technology and quality control technology in domestic companies is of low level. The seventh reason is that Chinese traditional medicine industry's excessively dependent on the environment. As we know, Chinese traditional medicine is mainly made from plants, animals and mineral, however, by excessively using, a lot of medicinal resources are exhausted and the ecological environment has become worse and worse. Except for the above reasons, the ineffective publicity of international certification system and the industry association not playing its role are also the reasons for Chinese traditional medicine encountering TBT.Based on the above analysis, in chapter six, countermeasures have been discussed. There are a lot of things to do for government, industry association and enterprises. Government should accelerate to build standard system and complete regulation system, publicize international certification, give more support and build platform for Chinese traditional medicine companies, research on WTO rules, establish international negotiation mechanism, strengthen publicity of the culture in Chinese traditional medicine, establish and perfect the service system for anti-TBT and install database. Industry association should also do its job to help enterprises to overcome TBT. They should firstly introduce international standards to enterprises, then develop and internationalize standards, and strengthen its function as an information transfer hub should not be ignored as well. For enterprises, firstly they should learn from successful examples in entering into market. Then management philosophy should be renewed to be quality-oriented management mode. R&D investment should be increased in order to be more competitive in technology. Moreover, enhancing awareness for environmental protection should also be done by enterprises. Only by cooperation of government, industry association and enterprises, there is possibility for Chinese traditional medicine to overcome TBT during the process of exportation. |
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