[CCS] F746.18 ［Literature Identifier］B ［Article No.］2095-3283(2012)07-0026-04
Author's Introduction：Peng Xi (1975-), Female, Changsha, Hunan, Lecturer of Business School of Hunan Agricultural University, M.S., Research Direction: International Trade. , Research Direction: International Trade.
Funded Projects: General Project of Soft Science Research Program of Hunan Province (2010ZK3095) and Youth Fund Project of Hunan Agricultural University (09QN37) Stage Research Results.
Foreign labor export, as an important part of the implementation of the "going out" strategy in Hunan Province, has seen rapid development in recent years, creating nearly 500 million U.S. dollars of foreign exchange earnings each year, and contributing to the improvement of the income level of urban and rural residents in Hunan Province. However, the existence of barriers to international trade in services has had a non-negligible impact on foreign labor export in Hunan Province. Especially with the outbreak of the international financial crisis and the European debt crisis, many countries, mainly developed countries, have raised barriers to trade in services in order to protect their own employment, deteriorating the market environment for foreign labor export in Hunan Province.
I. Types of international service trade barriers
Service trade barriers are a series of trade-distorting legislative and administrative measures implemented in the field of service trade. If the mode of service transactions and barriers affecting the provision and consumption of services are combined for classification, barriers to trade in services can be divided into four forms: barriers to the movement of people, barriers to the right to practice, barriers to the movement of products and barriers to the movement of capital.
(I) Barriers to the movement of persons
The movement of natural persons is the most controversial, the lowest-risk and the lowest-return mode of provision among the four modes of provision of trade in services stipulated in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and it is also the mode of provision in which the developed countries have the most stringent barriers against the developing countries. Barriers to the movement of people are mainly realized by host governments through the enactment of harsh immigration laws or cumbersome visa regimes. For example, the United Kingdom requires nurses and carers from China to have an English level of IELTS 6 or 6.5 or above; Israel and Mauritius have drastically cut the number of work visas issued to Chinese laborers in recent years, resulting in a sharp drop in the number of people from China working in these two countries. In addition to immigration restrictions, the government also restricts the freedom of foreign service providers to choose their employees, such as through employment laws that stipulate the percentage of local labor or positions. The U.S. Civil Rights Act, the Malaysian Quota System, the European Employment Permit System, and the Brazilian Local Employee Ratio Decree are all of this nature.
(ii) Right to Open Barriers
Right to open barriers are imposed by restricting the scope of foreign service entities in their home countries, the mode of operation and other activities of the authority, and even interfering with their specific business decisions. The right-to-open barriers are more targeted and severe restrictions on service providers, which is one of the barriers used more often by developed countries. For example, foreign banks and travel agencies are prohibited from setting up branches in their own countries, or although they are allowed to do so, they are required to discontinue direct business contacts with their head offices; some developing countries have a comparative advantage in construction and labor, but some developed countries have refused to provide the right of establishment in this regard. For example, the United States requires construction contractors to provide 100 percent performance bond, and the amount of insurance by the insurance company according to the construction company in the local engineering experience to determine the foreign company is difficult to obtain insurance and operational difficulties; some countries also provide for the opening of professionals must receive local education or training, registered in a foreign country or obtained by lawyers, doctors and other practicing qualifications or educational certificates to take discriminatory measures, and so on.
(C) service product movement barriers
Service product movement barriers are a kind of barriers linked to trade in goods. Because the completion of some services need to tangible goods as a carrier (such as CD-ROMs containing knowledge products), some countries by restricting the movement of goods to achieve the purpose of restricting the movement of service products. Barriers to the movement of service goods include quantitative restrictions, local content or local requirements, government procurement, discriminatory technical standards and tax regimes, and outdated systems of intellectual property protection. These measures are similar to non-tariff barriers such as quotas, inspection and quarantine for goods products. Common measures include: setting quotas on service imports; requiring service vendors to purchase equipment locally, to use local sales networks or to lease only rather than purchase all of it; requiring that services in the public *** area be purchased only from domestic vendors or that the government monopolize the market by selling at a loss, thereby directly or indirectly excluding foreign competitors; and limitations on telecommunication technology or on cross-border telecommunication and data transmission.
(D) capital movement barriers
Capital movement barriers are mainly related to the commercial presence, the main forms of foreign exchange control, floating exchange rates and restrictions on the repatriation of investment income, including both outward and inward movements of capital. For example, through foreign exchange control can restrict multinational corporations to use internal transactions to transfer high monopoly profits, but also increase the manufacturer's operating costs, and will weaken the purchasing power of consumers; or the proportion of foreign enterprises to invest in certain industrial sectors in their own countries to limit, etc..
Two, Hunan Province, the status of foreign labor export
Foreign labor export can be broadly divided into two forms of direct and indirect: direct foreign labor export is the labor force to leave the home country to foreign employment, that is, the occurrence of the international mobility of the labor force, such as through the contracting of engineering or foreign labor cooperation in construction, transportation, technical services, or individuals abroad to engage in catering, entertainment and other folk Indirect foreign labor export; indirect foreign labor export is the labor force did not leave the home country to provide services for foreign consumers, such as providing processing services for foreign enterprises, accepting the outsourcing of services from foreign enterprises, and so on.
(I) the scale of foreign labor export continues to expand, the total amount of low
In 2008, Hunan Province, foreign labor cooperation newly signed contracts amounting to 824 million U.S. dollars, the completion of the turnover of 571 million U.S. dollars. 2009 Hunan Province, foreign labor cooperation accumulated turnover of 530 million U.S. dollars. 2010, the Hunan Province, foreign labor cooperation signed contracts amounting to 576 million U.S. dollars, the completion of the turnover of 431 million U.S. dollars. In 2011, in the traditional foreign contracted projects and labor market turbulence and changes in the unfavorable situation, Hunan Province, foreign contracted projects and labor cooperation bucked the trend and still maintained a relatively rapid growth. The province's foreign contracting business turnover of 1.46 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 33.8%; the actual income of 768 million U.S. dollars of foreign laborers, an increase of 45.6%. It can be seen that the overall development of foreign labor service cooperation in Hunan Province is on a steady upward trend. In this environment the scale of expatriate laborers in Hunan Province is also expanding (see Table 1).
However, from the national point of view, the scale of Hunan's expatriate labor force is relatively small. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce of China, in 2011, the final number of laborers sent out by Hunan Province for foreign contracting and labor cooperation was 22,578, which ranked 15th in the country and the second last among the six provinces in central China.
(2) Rapid increase in the number of business entities engaged in foreign contracting and labor cooperation
Since 1986, Hunan International Economic and Technical Cooperation Corporation (HIETC) has been engaged in foreign contracting and labor cooperation. contracted the Thailand Bangkok North Standard Oil Plant plant construction project, after 24 years of development, by 2010, there are 49 enterprises have obtained the qualification of foreign engineering contracting business, China Water Resources and Hydropower Eighth Engineering Bureau and other 6 enterprises were set up in overseas branches or offices, through the operation and service network to the overseas market extension and expansion.