On 12-13 October, the 2016 Global Value Chain Innovation Development Summit takes place in Shenzhen, China. This event is organized by the World Trade Organization (WTO) , Shenzhen Municipal Government, and Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of MOFCOM. International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) and Shenzhen Logistics Industry Win-Win Foundation are institutional sponsors.
The development of global value chains (GVCs) is one of the major factors of trade growth and economic globalization in the past 30 years. It has reshaped global production and trade models with increased efficiency and inclusiveness. The extensive research in recent years has confirmed the close relationship between participation global production chains and fast economic growth. As a result, governments around the world increasingly identified GVCs as one of their priorities in designing economic and social policies.
As a policy instrument, the promotion of integration with GVCs is inter-related with a number of other dimensions faced by policy-makers. Among which are investment policy, trade finance, development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and e-commerce. Although policies supporting GVC integration normally share the same goals with these policies, how they might be formulated and implemented in reality are not always straightforward and obvious. For example, policies encouraging foreign direct investment will facilitate the participation of global production activities; and, in turn, the deep integration with GVCs will bring more investment. However, investment policies in many countries serve also as tools for dealing with other priorities, such as industrialization and employment. How to keep balance among different policy dimensions is an important task worth deep reflections and discussions.
GVCs provide valuable new market opportunities for businesses, in particular SMEs, who are most able to respond and adapt to the rapidly changing global demand. A critical issue for policymakers, however, is how to provide a level playing field for the SMEs to compete and how to support them with capital and human resources. Similarly, the rapid development of e-commerce has provided important opportunities for enterprises to further streamline their business model, upgrade and further integrate with GVCs. How to facilitate this process crystalize these opportunities is a useful question to be answered.
The objection of this Global Value Chain Summit is to reinforce the dialogue between the business community, researchers and policy makers on the development of global value chains, with a specific objective to identify policies, at both national and international level, that will promote growth through globalized production, trade, investment and innovation. Experts from the business community, international organizations, and research institutions will identify emerging patterns and trends of the recent GVC development; discuss issues and problems faced by businesses; and, more importantly, use the experience gained to explore possible trade and development policy framework at national and international level to facilitate the insertion of small and medium firms from least and low-income developing countries into global value chains.
Dr Shuaihua Wallace Cheng from ICTSD is invited to speak at the “Launch of the World Trade Report 2016” and panel 4 on “GVC innovation – e-commerce, new technology, services”.
Speakers of this conference include: Yi Xiaozhun, Deputy Director-General of the WTO; Xu Qin, Mayor of Shenzhen; Gu Xueming, President, CAITEC, MOFCOM; Ayumi Konishi, Director General, East Asia Department, ADB; Gonzalo Varela, Senior Economist, the World Bank Group; Rudolf Albert Scharping, CEO, RSBK GmbH; Gu Yanmin, Vice President, Midea Group; Sun Zhenyu, Chairman of China Society for World Trade Organization Studies; Liu Yuefu, Chairman, Beijing Huizhixingda IPR Ltd.; Olivier Linossier, President, Eurasia Industries Group; Adnan Seric, Director, UNIDO; Zhang Chunhua, Chairman, China Brilliant Supply Chain Service Co., Ltd; Zhou Guohui, Chairman, Eternal Asia Supply Chain Management Ltd.; Huang Tianhua, Assistant President, CIMC, etc.
