As an important shoe manufacturing base on the Chinese mainland, Wenzhou in
eastern Zhejiang Province is home to nearly 4,000 shoemakers, employing more
than 400,000 workers and producing 600 million pairs of shoes annually.
Last year, Wenzhou exported 438 million pairs of shoes at a combined value of
1.58 billion U.S. dollars. One third of the exports were sold to the EU.
Wenzhou's leather shoes export to EU accounts for about one fourth of China's
total to EU.
But customs statistics show that in June and July, the shoes export from
Wenzhou dropped by 7.17 percent from the year-earlier level.
"At the highly globalized international market today, the 16.5
percent anti-dumping duties will not only drag China's shoemakers down from
their superior position amidst fierce competition but also make it hard for
the medium-and small-sized firms to survive," said Xu.
What's more, the anti-dumping
duty sanction runs counter to the free trade policy initiated by
the European Commission and it will not save the declining shoe-making industry
of EU in a real sense, he said.
The EU's latest move on anti-dumping duties was also widely criticized by
European business and consumer groups, which say that such measures will lead to
job losses in the retail sector, and hurt millions of consumers
"An old Chinese saying says moving stones can roll over your own feet. Though
the anti-dumping duty is a strike for Chinese shoes firms, the EU retailers and
consumers are also victims of the EU's decision," Zhou Yaohua, vice president of
the Wenzhou-based Dongyi Shoe-making Com.,Ltd., told Xinhua on Saturday.
To counteract the impact of EU's anti-dumping tariffs, Chinese shoe
manufactures have shifted their eyesight on the new markets in Southeast Asia,
South America and Oceania as well as speeding up expansion of the domestic
market.
"We have made preparations to open the markets in South America and Australia
since the EU planned to carry out anti-dumping investigation last year," said
Xu.
The orders from EU have decreased obviously since it imposed the anti-dumping
tariffs in April, but our overseas sales volume so far is almost equal to that
of last year as the sales in the new markets had increased rapidly, said Xu.
The Aokang Group, the country's second largest shoemaker, focuses more on the
mainland market to diversify the risk of intensifying competition at overseas
market.
Aokang plans to invest 1 billion yuan (126.58 million U.S. dollars) to build
a western shoe-making capital in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing.
"The low labor price and huge market in western China are not resistable for
the development of Aokang," said Wang Zhentao, Aokang's president.
In addition, to tackle the tariff issue, Chinese shoe
firms have also begun to build overseas factories in Russia, Nigeria and even in
EU member countries.