The Study On The International Competitiveness Of China’s Household Electrical Appliance Industry In The Perspective Of Low-carbon Economy

With the increasing conflict between resources and environment and the development of economic society. the high carbon development model of global economy has become more and more difficult to be continued, and the low carbon model has become an inevitable choice. Low carbon leads a green revolution of society development, and a series of concepts, such as " low-carbon economy’" low-carbon industries " and " low-carbon society", are emerging constantly. The requirement of low carbon has penetrated into every aspect of society development. The request of "carbon standard "and the international industrial competition force each industry to confront the relationship between carbon emissions and its own competitiveness. High-carbon industries will be subject to various restrictions in the international competition. and the competition in the future lies in the competition of low-carbon. Depending on the first-mover advantage, the developed countries in Europe and America,who have the advantages of low-carbon standard and low-carbon technology, build a lot of green threshold in the international trade in an attempt to control the low-carbon trade for the purpose of maximizing the profits. Therefore, for one country to cater for the tendency of consumption of low-carbon and to occupy a place in the international competition, the only way is changing the traditional "high-carbon" competition model to satisfy the standard of "low pollution, low emission and low power consuming".Of the low-carbon competition industries, the paper selects the typical appliance industry. The development of appliance industry is the miniature of the development of China’s manufacturing industries from slumber to awakening. Since appliance industry is closely linked to the development of low economy, the research on the international competition of appliance industry from the perspective of low-carbon is of great significance. Owing to the development in the past30years, the industrial scale of China appliance industry ranks first place all over the world, and so does the sales of the major production. The scale and price of the export is increasing perpetually, and export regions are mainly distributed in developed countries such as United States, Europe and Japan. Judging from the international market share, trade competitiveness index, and revealed comparative advantage, our traditional appliance industry has possessed stronger competiveness.China has established the status of appliance industry as a big manufacturing country. However, in the new international competition trend, because of the change of the demand of the international market, the export of our appliances still face some problems urgent to be solved. Especially in low-carbon situation, the energy efficiency requirements, green low-carbon certification, carbon tariffs and other trade barriers have become the toughest threshold for the export of the appliance to cross; low carbon standard results in the increase in the manufacturing cost, which will challenge our advantage of the low cost; lacking the core technology and the backward construction of export free brands result in the low brand competitiveness in appliance industry; carbon productivity is not high, which affects sustainable development of our appliances trade.By making an analysis of factors which have influence on our appliance industry, it has been found that some factors promote the development of China appliance industry and play a vital role in upgrading its international competitiveness. For examples, the low end labor resources are abundant which make China’s appliance industry have the advantage of low cost and low price; because of the background of urbanization and the new rural construction, the popularity of appliances supports the improvement of the industry competitiveness in the form of domestic demand; the concentration is improving constantly and the scale effect becomes increasingly obvious; the government policies of stimulating domestic demand and rebating the export tax guarantee the steady growth of the internal and external sales of appliances. While some factors are inclined to becoming obstacles (especially to low carbon competitiveness). For instance, the energy elements of low carbon development is not abundant; it is the shortage of the technicians of low carbon; the enterprises do not invest much in research and development; the relevant and the supporting industries is developing slowly and do not have enough competitiveness; some appliance enterprises lack long-term strategic foresight:the appliance industry is with the great internal friction, and the appliance enterprises have a vague understanding of green marketing; the appliance enterprises lack the international vision and turn a blind eye to domestic and international low-carbon standard.; the policies for government to encourage the development are not systematic, and there are also some loopholes in the policies.Because of the problems mentioned above, our government and appliance industry should make joint efforts, enhance the function of the beneficial factors, and overcome disadvantages. It is essential to take effective measures to upgrade our low carbon competitiveness and international competitiveness in the appliance industry, and transfer from a big appliance country into an appliance power finally. which depends on the investment and optimization of the factor of production, the improvement of the market demand of low-carbon product, the complement of the domestic and oversea business strategies and the industrial chain integration.