A Study On The Evolution Of Quality Standards For International Trade Goods

Goods quality standards are important manifestation of goods use value. Since joining into the WTO, under the context of low-price competition based on the demographic dividend, China has suffered plenty of incidents of goods being returned or being destroyed due to our goods being not qualified. As a result, the quality standards have a tendency of "race to the bottom" which means to the lowest quality standards. With the rising of China’s trade volume, trade frictions are increased continuously, and the product quality standards are difficult to adapt to the new situation. So far, China is the country suffered the most trade frictions in the world. Under this situation, how to improve quality standards, to enhance product quality and to reach the standard of win to all are the problems need to be solved.This dissertation studies the quality of international trade goods from the point of standard, and tries to discuss and demonstrate the evolution mechanism of the goods quality standards for international trade. The evolution mechanism’s manifestations are summarized as "three dimensions, two subjects, and one motivation ". There are two evolution paths. In the first path, the formation of quality standard initially performed as the evolution of the quality technical standards which mainly depend on the market. In this path products will obtain comparative cost advantage. In the second path, the formation of quality standard mixed with the evolution of quality ecological and quality social standards, which mainly depend on the government. And in this path, the product will obtain the competitive advantage. These two paths evolve collaboratively.The dissertation is divided into six chapters. The first chapter is introduction, which describes the research background and topic significance of this thesis. There is no uniform definition and classification for the quality standards of international trade goods. According to the overview on the evolution causes and trends, there are few researches on the causes for evolution of international goods quality standards, but the international trade theory and system changes mention the relative price is the motivation for economic evolution, while the expression of relative prices in international trade is the comparative advantage. As to the subjects of the evolution, the literatures show market and government. From the point of view of the evolution trends, the evolution of quality standards is tend to evolve from quality technical standards to the quality ecological, social standards.The second chapter is an overview of the international trade goods quality standards. Through the analysis of the meaning, classification and function of quality standards, this dissertation sates that the quality standards of goods not only include the product quality standards, but also include the quality technical standards, and the quality production process standards, namely the quality ecological standards and quality social standards. Quality technical standards, quality ecological standards, quality social standards constitute the commercial quality standard system. The quality technical standards deal with the problems in the technical level. The quality ecological standards deal with the problems of governing the negative externalities of goods. The quality social standards deal with the internalization of social welfare.Chapter III reviews the evolution of quality standards for international trade goods. Through historic and logic analysis and instance description, this chapter respectively reviews the evolutions of quality technical standards, quality ecological standards and quality social standards. And the analysis shows that the quality technical standards evolutes in the form of "ladder", the quality ecological standards evolutes in the form of "shell", and the quality social standards evolutes in the form of "tower"Chapter IV analyzes the motivation of the evolution of the quality standards for international trade goods. By qualitatively analyze the manifestations of the evolution of quality standards,"the three dimensions, two subjects, one motivation", the author draws out the evolutionary path. Synergistic evolution of government and market forms the comparative advantage, which promotes the quality standards. State-level analysis depicts the context of the quality standards development. Technical standards①shape comparative cost advantage, technical standards②shape comparative advantage, and technical standards③shape generalized comparative advantage.Chapter V analyzes the effectiveness of the evolution of quality standards for international trade goods. Through quantitatively analyzing the effectiveness of quality standards evolution and measuring the degree of correlation between quality standards and comparative advantage and the size of economy scale, the dissertation proves that the comparative advantage is the motivation for the evolution.Chapter VI states some policy recommendations.According to the evolution mechanism of quality standards for international trade goods, the author proposes recommendations from the aspects of meeting the quality standards have been issued, grasping the quality standards are being developed, competing for developing the future quality standards.