The Impact Of SA8000 Standard On Export Trade Of China And Countermeasures

The Standard SA8000 is the first international ethical standard which is launched by the Social Accountability International (For short SAI). It's about to regulate the social accountabilities of various enterprises, and to make these enterprises take their responsibilities to stockholders while producing and making profit. The application of Standard SA8000 signifies that the enterprises must improve mentally the sense of social responsibilities, and strengthening the administration of enterprises by raising the benefits of employees, improving the working environment, and protecting the safety and the health of workers, and so on. It's not only useful to protect the employees'interests, and also helpful to promote the high efficient production, lawful operations and fairly competitions in the business, so that the enterprises can grow up continually. On the other side, nowadays the developed countries have related Standard SA8000 with international trades; the standard is not just a working criterion any more which is used to accelerate the enterprises to regulate the social accountabilities. The tariff and no-tariff wall have been weakened in the modern international trades, the developed countries have started using the standard SA8000 as an important instrument to block the export of labor intensive products from developing countries, there out the frictions of relative interests is increasing in the international trades. In China, although there are lots of enterprises that have passed through the standard SA8000, but for these enterprises, there are still limitations judging from the business they are in and the regions they are from. Some of the reasons which cause the currently situation, are that the local government is lacking of a positive attitude and necessary support, the public doesn't know well this standard and is lacking of sense of duty, and the workers are lacking of the sense of self protecting. What more important is that the enterprises themselves don't have the right attitude and correct cognition to the standard SA8000, and some enterprises have different understanding to the social responsibilities. So, it's very necessary to have a deep research on the standard SA8000, it serves an a theoretical reference for China to view this standard generally and objectively, to accept actively and to try to shorten the difference between our country's labor situation and international labor standard. At the same time, the research is also significant for China to promote international competition ability and to break through some trade limitations which are related to labor standard.This paper starts at this point, gaining and analyzing a lot of experiences from research results of related experts and scholars, and presenting the arguments with both theoretical analysis and positive analysis. At first, this paper introduces the standard SA8000's background when it was born, and its contents and characters, then its present development. Based on that, the paper analyses numerous factors which influence China to import this standard. Second, studying the causes why the standard SA8000 was used widely in international trades, and explaining why the developed countries are happy to bring in the standard and the developing countries are also happy to accept it by analyzing the model. Then analyzing how much the standard SA8000 influences the China export trades from the views of macroscopic, the middle, microcosmic, which leads to the result of that, in a short time, this standard will weaken the competitive advantages of Chinese export traders, obstruct export trades, deteriorate the trade environment,go against to update the product mix. But in the long run, the application of SA8000 contributes to enhance innovative ability of Chinese enterprises, to increase the added value of exported products, to advance enterprises'development, to improvement the reputation in international level, and also to reduce the various frictions about labor standard in the international trades, etc. Third, use wage to the abstract SA8000 standard, and collect and sort out the data of the exports of manufactured goods and manufacturing workers' wages. By using of the econometric methods, we study the realities of its impact of SA8000 on export trade of China and there is a long-term equilibrium of relations between them. Finally, on the basis of the above analysis, with its own specifications to put forward measures to deal with the contradiction between SA8000 standard and the export trade of our country in the view of the government, industry associations and enterprises to reduce the adverse effects of short-term and to make long-term beneficial effect into reality as soon as possible.