| As new type of non-tariff trade barriers, green barriers were born in 1970"s and thrived in 1990’s. The rapid growth of economy not only enriched people’s material life but also brought a series of serious environmental problems. Human beings gradually realized the importance of environmental protection. The development of economy and the improvement of living standards also raised people’s concern about food safety and human health. In consequence, it has become necessary to put environmental protection measures into international trade rules. Under the circumstances, green barriers gradually became effective trade measures to restrict or prohibit import. In recent years, green barriers were frequently used by most developed countries, which made it gradually show out from many kinds of trade barriers. It seemingly met the requirements of sustainable development on the pretext of protecting ecological environment, natural resources and human health, while it actually aimed to protect national industries and restrain other countries’ products entering domestic market.As the original place of tea, China has a history of 6000 years in tea planting. With the advantages of natural resources and labor force, Chinese tea’s annual output has been ranking first in the world. In 2014, Chinese tea’s annual output was 2,095,700 tons, which was far ahead of other tea producing countries. At the same time, tea is one of the main products in agricultural products’export of China. Annual export volume of Chinese tea was 300,100 tons which held the third place in the world. It can be seen that, whether in production aspect or export aspect, China held a prominent place in international tea trade. Among Chinese tea’s major export destinations, Africa, EU and Japan accounts for a considerable proportion. Due to the low consumption level of Africa, the export price of Chinese tea was relatively lower. As the major consumption region of high-quality tea, the export price in EU was higher and had larger profit margins. As a result, EU has become the major export market for Chinese tea enterprises.However, EU has the strictest green barriers system around the world. Concretely speaking, it mainly includes green tariffs, green environmental labels, green technical standard, green packaging and green environmental and health quarantine. All these above have become important barriers prevented Chinese tea from entering European market. In past decade, EU constantly revised and perfected its green barriers system. Green barriers have become one of the major problems affected the steady increase of Chinese tea exporting to EU. Up to 2014, the volume of Chinese tea exporting to EU has not been restored to the level of 1999. Therefore, it has practical significance to study green barriers system of EU, analyze their impact on Chinese tea export and make suggestions for breaking the green barriers and promoting the sustainable development of Chinese tea export.The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter mainly introduced the research background and the significance of this thesis. Then it reviewed the research results of domestic and foreign scholars in the field of green barriers. Among them, the study of foreign scholars was generally divided into two parts:the theoretical research and the empirical research. By summarizing their research findings, it can be seen that most of foreign scholars agreed with the implementation of green barriers. On the contrary, domestic scholars mainly focused on the study of negative impact of green barriers on export. It is because China is a developing country. Whether in economic strength or scientific or technological level China lagged behind western developed countries. Hence China was susceptible to green barriers in export trade.The second chapter is the overview of green barriers theory. Firstly it introduced the definition of green barriers, and pointed out that it is a kind of non-tariff barriers. It differed from other non-tariff barriers because it combined the economic development with environmental protection. And then it introduced the forms of expression of green barriers mainly including green tariffs, green technology standards, green environmental labels, green packaging, green environmental health quarantine system and green subsidies. Secondly, it analyzed the factors contributed to the formation of green barriers from four aspects. Finally, it introduced the characteristic of green barriers such as rationality, legitimacy, controversy, concealment and discrimination.The third chapter introduced the production and export situation of Chinese tea. In the aspect of production, it firstly introduced the distribution of tea producing areas in China. According to different climatic and soil conditions, the author classified the major varieties of Chinese tea. And then through analyzing the production data in recent ten years, the author concluded that both plantation areas and annual output of Chinese tea have been increasing. At last, through the comparison of per unit yield with other tea producing countries in the world, it drew a conclusion that production efficiency of Chinese tea is lower than that of main tea producing countries. In the aspect of export, it also listed export data in recent ten years and introduced the export situation of Chinese tea from exporting scale and exporting structure two aspects. The data showed that Chinese tea’s market share is decreasing.The fourth chapter is the core part of the thesis. It studied the impact of green barriers of EU on Chinese tea export. First of all. the author selected the export data of Chinese tea exporting to EU in recent ten years, and analyzed the changes of export volume, export value and export varieties. It can be seen that the export volume of Chinese tea has experienced dramatic decline. Especially when EU changed pesticide residues standards of tea, Chinese tea exporting to EU would reduced. Then it summarized the types and characteristics of green barriers of EU encountered by China according to green barriers theory introduced in chapter two. The positive and negative impact of green barriers on Chinese tea export was analyzed in the end.The fifth chapter summarized the reasons that Chinese tea exporting to EU often suffered from green barriers. The reasons could be divided into two parts, internal reason and external reason. Under the special circumstances of EU"s market, pesticides used in Chinese tea’s planting base are not in line with the actual requirements of EU. The low degree of standardization of tea production, tea enterprises lacking of brand building and backward tea standards in China are also internal reasons. In the external environment, due to the rise of trade protectionism in developed countries and the awareness of green consumption concept of consumers, MRLs of EU were much higher than the international level, which caused Chinese tea exporting to EU continually decreased.The sixth chapter is the suggestion part. According to the above analysis, the author put forward relevant recommendations mainly from the aspects of enterprise, industry and government on the basis of the reasons. At the enterprise level, Chinese tea enterprises should strengthen pesticide management in the planting base, pay attention to the latest changes of EU’s green standards, and actively carry out environmental standards certification. At the industry level, Chinese tea committee should promote the industrialized development of tea. At the government level, Chinese government should set up green pre-warning mechanism to effectively use WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism and establish the national standards of tea as soon as possible to adapt to the new changes in the international market. |
PDF Full Text Request