| Since the reform and opening up, China’s furniture manufacturing realized huge development and furniture industry is beginning to take shape. According to the data from State Statistics Bureau, China’s total industrial output value of furniture industry reached241.6billion RMB in2007, leaping to the first place in the world. China has become the world furniture producer and manufacturing center. The Increase of furniture production capacity in China has led to the rapid growth of furniture export trade. The furniture industry has become an important part of China’s export. In2005China emerged as the world’s largest exporter of furniture. As a labor-intensive industry, China’s furniture industry creates numerous job opportunities and considerable amount of export income, making great contribution to China’s economic growth. However, China’s furniture industry is not yet mature, there are many problems to be solved in its export procedure. Therefore, under the background of economic globalization, studying various problems in the furniture export trade, to maintain a rapid growth momentum and improve international competitiveness, has a strong practical significance.In the first chapter, the introduction part contains theoretical guiding ideology of the paper, introduced the macro background and microcosmic background of China’s international trade friction, and the research status and development trend at home and abroad, which paves the way for the following discussion.The second chapter presents detailed analysis of the present situation and problems of China’s furniture export, mainly including the development, production and market situation of China’ furniture industry. The overall size of furniture export, commodity structure, export market distribution, and trade way are summed in order to provide a background for the main content under mentioned and the prospect of China’s furniture export is forecasted. In the third chapter, it is pointed out that the export of Chinese furniture industry faces two problems. One is external problem restricting the export of Chinese furniture, mainly the anti-dumping, green barriers, exchange rate fluctuations, export tax rebates and other factors. Among all these external factors, the FSC forest certification effect on the export of furniture industry in China is discussed in detail; Second is China’s own problems in export procedure, such as blindly copying, lack of the brand consciousness, concentrated export market, and so on.Trade barrier is the primary factor restricting our furniture export scale. On November17th,2004, the U.S. Commerce Department made the final anti-dumping determination, ruled that the margin of dumping established in the Chinese companies involved were ranging from5.07%to198.08%. On October28th2005, Canadian Council Of Furniture Manufacturers (CCFM) applied to Canadian International Trade Tribunal(CITT) to launch special safeguard measure investigation into Chinese home furniture products and insisted three-year surcharge tax on these products. In addition, the increasing environmental standard of raw materials will directly affect our furniture export. In May2010, the European Commission approved the resolution granting wooden furniture ecological label standard-2009/894/EC. This standard focuses on environmental protection of products, aiming to reduce the influence of wood furniture on the environment and human health in using process. The high application fee, thereby, objectively set high green barriers to wooden furniture industry. From March3rd2013, the EU will enforce Regulation of Wood and Wood Products and New Environmental Design Instruction. The instruction requires all manufacturers on the timber production, processing, and sales chain must obtain the ID card from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), if the timber is to export to EU. It means that the exporters must submit basic information to prove the legal origin of timber, including wood source, country, forest, timber volume and weight, name and address of log suppliers. However, so far only10%of timber around the world has got the FSC certification. The percentage is less than1%in China. Environmental factor is gradually becoming a prominent theme of the foreign technical barriers, and Chinese furniture export will face more severe challenge. This is one of the main points the author will discuss in the following part of the thesis.Besides, new export refund tax policy was implemented on July1st2010. According to the new policy, furniture export rebate rate was reduced from13%down to11%or9%. To make it worse, China’s processing trade policy was adjusted again on August23, in which17kinds of furniture products were included in the list of export restriction. The catalogue of prohibited commodities in processing trade includes furniture and panel made of domestic timber. It means that the furniture made of domestic timber is not allowed to export. However, if the furniture uses imported timber as raw materials, the furniture products are allowed to export.With the continuous development of the world furniture market, Chinese furniture industry is facing strong international competitive pressure. ASEAN countries are competing for our low and medium-grade furniture market share; The European and American countries are capturing the high-end furniture market in our countryOn the other hand, the furniture industry itself in China still has many deficiencies and problems, such as repeated construction, high similarity, low level competition and lack of innovative design. Modern marketing management mode has not been formed. As a kind of structured products, furniture’s embodiment of aesthetic feeling and materials has obvious public characteristics. Once one new product is launched, other manufacturers can easily copy and improve. Copying has become serious phenomenon in the domestic furniture industry. The main reason for the status quo is low threshold into the industry and staff shortages in design research and development. As the international market opened further, China’s furniture industry has become one important part of global value chain. From the point of the profit distribution of different links on the value chain, our furniture export enterprises in the whole network is mainly in the middle part of the smile curve by doing processing trade. How to improve the market competitiveness to realize new industrial growth is an impending question.In the fourth chapter, some microscopic and macroscopic countermeasures were concluded according to the problems above in order to enlarge the export amount of Chinese furniture.On the micro level, enterprises should increase investment in scientific research design and brand consciousness; Export region diversity; Optimize the structure of products, diversified development; to promote industrial upgrading, and increase product added value; to improve the environmental awareness and build green ecological furniture; Strengthen connections with the international market standards and improve the product market access; open up the international and domestic market at the same time.On the one hand, the furniture industry in China should actively seek and develop a new target market such as Southeast Asia, South America and Australia. Exporting to multiple regions and countries around the globe will improve the diversity of furniture export market and reduce the risk due to the decline of target market. It can also prevent anti-dumping caused by over-concentration of export areas, and be more advantageous for the furniture industry to expand the scale of production and achieve scale effect.As the improvement of economic development level, China’s domestic market potential is emerging with a population of1.3billion. The furniture enterprises of developed countries have found this huge market, and strive to seize the domestic high-end furniture market with the aid of China cancelling furniture import tariffs. At the same time, the furniture exporters of Southeast Asian nations have also started to compete for domestic low-end furniture market share.The rapid growth of imported furniture products forced Chinese enterprises to face more intense market competition. China furniture enterprises cannot give up this big market with a population of1.3billion. They must keep the domestic market in the first place. Although many enterprises have become accustomed to exporting, domestic enterprises have more advantages compared with foreign enterprises, since they are more familiar with Chinese culture, social conditions, and relevant regulations and law, etc.; It is easier for them to build sales channels and create famous brand.On the macro level, the government should issue industrial standard and impelling integration of furniture industry;improve the foreign trade policies to encourage furniture products export; enhance government’s negotiation ability and striving for fair trade environment; encourage enterprises to make green technology innovation. The furniture industry association should be given full play to its function. On the one hand, it should build early warning mechanism; on the other, provide timely industry information to enterprises.In the end, all the studies in this paper were summed. The author hope that this study can help China’s furniture industry to overcome the difficulties in the course of export, with which can China become the world’s strongest country in exporting furniture in the near future, can the furniture industry make more and more contributions to the growth of China economy. |
