| This paper is devoted to a general study of both the positive and negative impacts of China's entry into WTO on the electric power generation equipment manufacturing industry, followed by some relevant policy suggestions to the government in order to ensure a healthy, steady and sustainable development of the key national industry as well as some suggested countermeasures to be taken by the Chinese enterprises to seize the opportunities and meet the new challenges in a global and much more competitive market.China's electric power generation equipment manufacturing industry has gradually established a comparatively solid material and technological foundation with a complete industrial system to independently produce around eighty percent of the power generation sets operating in the country. However, in view of the technological level as well as many other aspects, there still exists noticeable gap between China's electric power generation equipment manufacturing industry and that of the Western advanced countries, which indeed affects the competitiveness of the domestically made power generation units. Meanwhile, as state-owned enterprises have grown up from the planning economic system, the Chinese manufacturers do have some long-standing problems such as irrational mix, poor technological innovation capability, heavy social burdens, inflexible operating mechanism and shortage of entrepreneur and human resources,.Although the power generation equipment manufacturing industry is not that sensitive to the tariff concession after China's entry into WTO due to the relatively low tariff level at the moment plus some tariff preference policies depending on the technological level of the imported power generation units and different investment resources, the cancellation of non-tariff barriers such as the import restriction policy will have substantial impact on the industry resulting a decreased marked share in the country. With further opening of the domestic market, the WTO entry will have strong influences particularly on those high valued-added advanced power generation units with high efficiency and low pollutants emission including large size CFB units, super-critical units as well as other kinds of clean firing units such as IGCC which satisfy the latest needs of customers but the domestic manufacturers are still not able to produce at the moment.The paper holds that after China's entry into WTO the national power generation equipment manufacturing industry will face more opportunities than challenges. The WTO entry is going to play a rather important role in promoting the economic development of the country. This role is explained as to help deepen the reform of the national industry, accelerate the transformation of corporate operation mechanism, facilitate the introduction of foreign advanced technology and capital to promote upgrading the products, reduce the production cost due to the lower custom duty for the imported raw materials needed, improve the export environment of complete set of power generation equipment realizing the target of market diversification and furthermore, to create a bigger market demand for power generation equipment with the remarkable economic growth of the country.In consideration of the extremely important position of the power generation equipment manufacturing industry in the national economy, our country's general principal policy of protecting this national industry should not be changed since China is joining WTO as a member of developing country. It is crucial for the power equipment manufacturing enterprises to ideologically adjust themselves to be used to the competitive operation environment and to take measures to improve their comprehensive competitiveness. These measures include optimizing the corporate operation mechanism, improving their products quality, adjusting the products mix to satisfy the market needs, carrying out technological innovation programs, widening up international cooperation for the advanced technology resources, and implem... |
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