European and American revised standards will bring new barriers to international trade in home appliance industry

In the process of my country's international trade, the losses caused by technical barriers amount to hundreds of billions of dollars every year. According to a report recently released by the Shandong Provincial Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, in 2011, nearly 40% of the province's export enterprises were affected to varying degrees by foreign technical trade measures, and the direct losses of export trade exceeded 16 billion US dollars.

For the home appliance industry, the obstacles brought by technical barriers will once again become prominent. According to Chai Xinjian, deputy director of technology at Little Swan and deputy director of the technical committee of the China Household Electrical Appliances Association, new energy efficiency standards will be introduced in Europe in January 2013, and in the second half of 2013, a new Energy Star policy will be introduced in the United States.

However, Chinese companies are somewhat passive in dealing with technological barriers, and are even less proactive than Japanese and European companies.

Lack of initiative

In 2002, Panasonic wanted to increase the temperature of the air outlet of an electrical appliance, but encountered technical barriers.

At that time, the international standard stipulated that the air outlet temperature of the appliance should be within 40 degrees. However, in Hokkaido, Japan and other northern regions that are relatively cold like Hokkaido, the air blown out of the air outlet at 40 degrees is cold, resulting in poor sales of Panasonic related products.

During the initial communication, Panasonic encountered many setbacks, but the company persisted in pushing forward and refused to give up. Finally, Panasonic found Chinese home appliance companies, and then joined forces with Korean companies. The three countries formed a joint team to modify the international standard to 65 degrees.

Experts doubted this temperature, believing that 65 degrees was too high and could burn the user. The Panasonic team proposed that the temperature of the hair dryer outlet could easily exceed 70 degrees, but it would not cause discomfort to the human body. After many negotiations, Panasonic successfully revised the international standard to 65 degrees in 2008, thereby expanding its sales range and breaking down trade barriers.

Lu Jianguo, director of the China Household Electrical Appliances Research Institute, said that Chinese companies lack initiative, attention and research on emerging international standards. "Sometimes when there are international standard proposals, (we) will send them to companies, but companies generally rarely respond," Lu Jianguo said. "The principle for dealing with international standards is to persist and actively participate, discuss and propose proposals every year. In order to solve technical barriers, when encountering international proposals, relevant companies should actively participate in voting and integrate the strength of multiple parties: integrate the strength of domestic companies to jointly propose; integrate the strength of other countries to jointly put pressure on the standard setters."

Most of the participants are managers

Zhou Xiaotian, deputy general manager of the China department of Bosch Siemens German headquarters, said that trade barriers and technical barriers are inseparable from policies and standards, and the formulation of international standards is a long process that requires continuous questioning and ultimately democratic voting. We should know its details and our gaps.

Many years ago, when Chinese companies participated in international standards meetings, they were called "3S representatives", which meant they could only smile, remain silent, and doze off.

In recent years, relevant Chinese enterprises have actively sent participants to the conference and have become noticeably more active. For refrigerators alone, Haier has proposed 31 international standards in total.

但国内企业与欧洲企业相比，区别依然很显著。

Zhou Xiaotian introduced that during his time in Germany, he participated in the formulation of refrigerator and compressor standards in the IEC standard-setting process.

When IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission, the world's earliest specialized international standardization organization) formulates standards, each of its member countries has one vote. The secretariat converts this vote into a standard and distributes it to the secretariats of each member country. After receiving the standard, the German secretariat immediately sends the inquiry from the international secretariat to each company and its members for inquiry. After receiving the inquiry, the company can express its own views. The opinions of the company and the country become one vote and then return to the international organization. Zhou Xiaotian said that under this system, it is not the strong countries and companies that can determine the final result, but the majority opinion. This determines the importance of communication between countries in the early stage.

Another weakness of our country is that most of the participants are managers who are not able to express convincing technical opinions. Japan's characteristic is that it sends five or six people from different companies who are actually involved in technology to attend the meeting and speak together. Although there are language barriers like us, and Japanese people's English may be even worse, Japan has formed a team, with many people speaking, and can also express convincing technical opinions, which makes it a very high position in international organizations.

Lu Jianguo finally said that technical barriers are mainly reflected in standards, first, the degree of participation in international standards, and second, the specific standards involving related enterprises. The formulation of many international standards is open to enterprises, and related enterprises should actively participate in the formulation of international standards, and then position the participants well, and it is best for the participants to be technical personnel who are actually working.