China said on Friday that it welcomes the Bush administration's decision to remove tariffs on steel imports and will not impose retaliatory sanctions on goods from the United States.

"We welcome the US decision. And we will not take countermeasures against American goods if the US makes good on its promise,'' Chong Quan, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Commerce, said yesterday in a statement.

"We will pay close attention to the US plan to continue to control steel imports through import licences and anti-dumping measures,'' Chong said.

China's stance came after the other major steel producers, such as the European Union and Japan, welcomed the US decision and announced they would drop their threat to impose retaliatory tariffs on US goods.

"The US tariffs on steel imports violated the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Bush administration just made a wise decision,'' said an official from the China Steel and Iron Association.

"We are studying details of the US decision to comment further,'' the official told China Daily.

The US started to impose extra tariffs of up to 30 per cent on steel imports to aid its floundering steel industry last year.

However, the WTO appellate body ruled last month that the US steel tariffs were illegal.

The steel association has stressed that the main target of China's steel industry is to increase shares of locally-made steel products on the domestic market, and not to aggressively export.

The nation's steel exports are tiny when compared with its total steel output.

China exported 5.71 million tons of steel during the first 10 months of this year, an increase of 28 per cent from a year earlier, statistics from the association indicate.

Meanwhile, the nation's total steel output increased by 20.48 per cent year-on-year to 191.87 million tons.

The association estimates China's total steel output and exports this year at 215 million tons and roughly 7 million tons respectively.

In contrast, China's steel imports have been soaring, which helps ease the world's steel trading conflicts, the association said.

The nation imported over 31 million tons of steel during the first 10 months of this year, up 51 per cent from the same period last year.

Total steel imports are expected to reach 36 million tons this year, the association said.

And China will remain a major net importer of steel in the coming year, the association said.

China became the world's largest steel importer last year, absorbing 24 million tons of foreign-made steel products. (See Page 4)

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