The European Union and the United States have ganged up on China in a World Trade Organization (WTO) forum, claiming it was back-sliding on opening up its economy to international competition and ushering in restrictive measures.
Mr John Clarke, head of the EU delegation to the WTO, said China had an excess dependence on export-led growth, boosted by the low value of its currency, various forms of state intervention, and focusing investment in export-oriented industries.
The EU official told a session examining China’s trade regime that the government still continued to intervene “to guide resources to particular sectors, notably manufacturing.” Mr Clarke also alluded that China was using trade finance to give its exporters an unfair advantage in global markets.
Similarly, deputy US trade representative Michael Punke said that since 2008 the United States noted “evidence of a possible trend toward a more restrictive trade regime.” This included new restrictions on market access and foreign investment in China, he said.
However, China’s deputy minister of commerce Yi Xiaozhun argued that his country has “remained firm towards trade liberalisation and continued to boost domestic demand.” He said that China had also become the “primary target of trade protectionism” and noted last year 22 WTO members initiated 116 trade remedy investigation against Chinese products, or 43 per cent of the world total.
A report by the WTO secretariat says that in 2009 China’s average applied the most favoured nation (MFN) tariff was 9.5 per cent in 2009, slightly lower than 9.7 per cent two year earlier. But the report notes that China’s average MFN tariff rate for textiles and apparel was 11.5 per cent in 2009 — substantially higher than the average of 8.6 per cent for industrial goods.
The WTO report also highlights that the fall in textiles and apparel during the downturn last year was substantially less than the overall 16% fall in total merchandise exports. The agency says their decline by less than other products “partly reflects the phase-out of export restrictions under China’s bilateral agreements with the EU, the US and South Africa, and adds that overall their share in total exports increased.
Source: http://www.aepcindia.com/international.asp?id=289&yr=2010
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