By Ma Yunjun
Translated by Chen Shuling
US, EU, and Argentina have taken anti-dumping measures against China one after another in the past month. US would charge penalty tariff for all the passenger car tyres and light truck tyres imported from China for the next 3 years; EU charges anti-dumping tariff for seamless steel pipes and aluminum foil made in China; Argentina has continuously set up several items of anti-dumping investigations and reexaminations and taken minimum price control measures to Chinese products. This wave of suspected trade protection actions aiming at China harmed the principle of global trade liberalization and fairness, which will certainly lead to a heavy blow to the export of related Chinese products. Chinese Version>>
In the G20 Pittsburgh Financial Summit held recently, the leaders of the 20 attendant countries, including Britain, US and China, claimed 'Leaders' Statement' together that all of them would fight against trade protectionism and be dedicated to successful accomplishment of the Doha Round Negotiation in 2010. This statement which expressed all countries' beautiful wish to maintain the trade liberty and fairness is the consensus of all countries. But practical measures may be hard to come out. Even though, the statement undoubtedly seriously warned the recent trade protectionism actions.
Since accession to WTO, China has increased the export of its commodities and expanded international market rapidly by taking the advantage of competitiveness in traditional fields. Especially in the fields such as textiles and small wares, China has occupied almost all the European and US markets. Wenzhou Smoking Set Association won the famous Wenzhou Lighter Lawsuit in 2002, but 'Made in China' didn't get a good fame in the world. The impact on related local industry caused by the advantage of cheap labour can be regarded destructive. Nowadays, 'Made in China' is gradually enlarging its field and the export of related products, including industrial products such as tyre, steel pipe, aluminum foil and carbon steel fastener, is excellent, which, to some extent, influenced the interests of related domestic industries of other WTO member states.
In order to protect their own interests and making the best of international legality of anti-dumping and flexbility of operation, the countries often take self-protection measures in the name of anti-dumping but in the nature of trade protection. For Chinese enterprises and government, they shouldn't sit still and wait to be killed. Under the current WTO legal framework, there are various adoptable remedy measures, such as directly making use of the preferential treatment for developing countries in the antidumping agreement. Even if Chinese products were deemed dumping, importing countries have the responsibility to take the interests of developing exporting countries into account and take other 'constructive remedy measures' in view of the reality. Or the dispute settlement procedures can be formally raised to WTO. As long as the appeal is supported, the member state which has taken anti-dumping measures must return the anti-dumping tariff already charged, or provide compensation in other ways. Although the procedures are complicated, there have been quite a few successful cases so far that the dispute settlement system is utilized to challenge great powers.
As China is facing up with continuous waves of anti-dumping investigations, the eye-to-eye revenge measure is most efficient. For example, after the Ministry of Commerce of China declared on Sept. 13 to start the anti-dumping and countervailing investigation procedures for some of the imported vehicle products and chickens from US, many American people began to blame Obama Government for its stupid decisions. Tit for tat is fair play. China is not afraid of trade war at all, but China will never start the trade war for no reason. So we'd like to advise US and the European countries to obey the international trade orders, abide by the 'Leaders' Statement', take some rational measures and bring themselves less troubles.