New century new challenges

China's accession to the WTO has brought business opportunities to Hong Kong's printing industry After 13 years of negotiations between China and the United States, it has finally reached an agreement on China’s accession to the World Trade Organization. China promises to gradually open telecommunications, insurance, finance, film and television, tourism, agriculture, foreign trade and domestic markets, professional services and sales support services in the next 3-5 years, including: freight forwarding, warehousing, advertising, and packaging services. In addition, China has also promised to phase out import quotas and drastically reduce tariffs. The tariffs on paper will be reduced from the current level of 15 to 25% to 7.5%.
Regardless of whether or not China is really forecasting, the Hong Kong Government should immediately set up a full-time team to study the impact of China's WTO accession on all walks of life in Hong Kong and provide appropriate contingency measures so that Hong Kong companies can get early opportunities. In the short term, during these three or five years, foreign investors will rush to set up offices in Hong Kong as bridgeheads to win business opportunities in the Chinese market. Therefore, there will be many foreign-funded companies listing in Hong Kong, and multinational companies will also enter Hong Kong, leading Hong Kong's economy that has just emerged from the bottom to take off quickly. The printing industry will also benefit from this, especially financial printing and commercial printing. In the long run, the benefits of Hong Kong’s role as an intermediary will gradually diminish. After years of exploration, foreign investors have mastered the tricks of investing directly in the Mainland. Together with their huge sums of money, Hong Kong companies will have to compete for one day. difficult. However, the printing industry is different from other industries. As most of the packaging and printing companies in Hong Kong have moved to the Mainland, although they also have the opportunity to run into competition with foreign or Mainland counterparts, due to the rapid development of the market and the development of industry and commerce, the packaging and printing industry The outlook is basically optimistic.
At present, Dajiu is still the second largest market for Hong Kong’s print exports, following only the United States. I believe that as long as the domestic publishing and printing policy is slightly open, and with the reduction of tariffs, the printing industry in Hong Kong still has considerable competitiveness. However, as Hong Kong's printing education still lags behind those of Europe, the United States, and neighboring countries and regions, when China enters the WTO and the economy enters into internationalization, the lack of planned personnel training will inevitably severely undermine Nanhai's competitiveness in Hong Kong.
In addition, because of the cultural differences between Hong Kong and the Mainland, there are often problems with the use of different terms in the Customs and Excise Department, resulting in repeated penalties for Hong Kong businessmen. Taiwan will join the World Trade Organization after joining the WTO. Therefore, the exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will certainly be more frequent. The import and export of goods will also be more, the differences will be even greater, and there will be more opportunities for problems. Last year, the Hong Kong Graphic Arts Society and the Hong Kong Printing Traders Association and the School of Educational Professional Education jointly organized the “Printing Nomenclature Standardization Forum”. After the meeting, the “Printed Nomenclature Standardization Joint Committee” was organized. However, due to financial problems, it has not yet been completed. In order to carry out the work, I hope that the Hong Kong Government can look far and provide support so that the Hong Kong printing community can convene expert meetings as soon as possible so as to avoid delays due to differences in the names and terms of production materials after the accession to the WTO, causing unnecessary losses and hindering the printing industry. development of.