Trade disputes mean tough winter for Chinese exporters

By Li Jiabao (China Daily) Updated: 2013-01-10 13:48

Last year, China had received 53 trade remedy investigations by the end of November affecting exports of $24.2 billion, seven times the amount in 2011, according to Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang.

The figure was 69 in 2011 with export value of $5.9 billion and 66 in 2010 with export value of $7.14 billion, according to the ministry.

Biggest victim

China was the world's biggest victim of anti-dumping investigations every year from 1995 to 2011, and also the most targeted in anti-subsidy investigations yearly from 2006 to 2011, according to the ministry. Trade remedy investigations targeting China totaled 758 from 2003 to September of 2012 with export value of $68.4 billion.

Trade disputes mean tough winter for Chinese exporters

Workers at an Aokang Group Co Ltd plant in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. Aokang won a legal case in late November against the EU's anti-dumping measures on Chinese leather shoes. [Photo / China Daily]

"The coming year will see a wider range of Chinese exports caught by trade remedy investigations, and the anti-dumping range will also be heavier," said Wei, a former vice-minister of commerce.

"The emerging economies intensified their gunfire against China, while the developed economies such as the US and the EU stepped back to trade protectionism from advancing free trade," Wei said.

India led the emerging countries in using trade remedy measures in the past decade while China was most targeted. The South Asian country's trade protectionism has brought quite a severe impact to bilateral trade, according to Mei Xinyu, a researcher at the International Trade and Economic Cooperation Institute of the Ministry of Commerce.

China was India's second-biggest trade partner, while India was China's ninth largest trade partner. Bilateral trade in 2011 increased by 19.7 percent to $73.92 billion, according to the General Administration of Customs, while India's statistics showed that India's trade deficit with China jumped 42 percent to nearly $40 billion in the last fiscal year ending March 31.

As China boosts its economic power, trade frictions against China are shifting from low-end industries to high-tech sectors, which is in line with China's industrial upgrading, said Gu Chunfang, head of the ministry's investigation bureau of industry injury.

"Some developed economies turned to protectionism rather than improving their industrial competitiveness to cope with China's industrial development. In addition, trade remedy investigations more frequently target China's industrial policies, including blaming the market status of China's State-owned enterprises, which has brought about broader and deeper impacts," Gu said.

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