Chinese Shoe Enterprises: Calmly Treat EU Anti-Dumping Against China

On the 16 day of the European Commission, the European Commission announced two decisions on China's exports to Europe: one is to terminate the provisional anti-dumping review of the Chinese Ockman M plywood, to maintain the original anti-dumping measures, and no longer expand the scope of application; the first is to initiate anti-dumping investigations on Chinese made candles and steel wire products.

The two decisions were made according to the requirements of manufacturers of similar products of the European Union. The difference was that the former did not increase the "sentencing" to the defendant in the old case, while the latter was assessing the possibility of "sentencing" to the defendant in the new case.

For a time, the EU's anti-dumping against China became a hot topic again.

It has been noted that after the trade frictions between China and Europe in 2005 and 2006, the EU launched another wave of anti-dumping against China in the past six months.

Since October last year, it decided to impose a 1 year anti-dumping duty on China's energy-saving lamps. By the end of December and early this month, we launched anti-dumping investigations on the Chinese steel products in a row, and then to the anti-dumping complaint against the Chinese production wire rod under consideration.

The reasons for the frequent restrictions imposed by the EU on Chinese commodities are complex and need to be examined from several perspectives.

First, from a political perspective, the EU's trade policy toward China is constrained by the EU's overall policy toward China.

In recent years, the strategic partnership between China and Europe has developed well and cooperation in various fields has deepened.

But at the same time, in the west, the Cold War mentality has not been completely abandoned, and China has been attacked from time to time on issues of democracy, human rights and so on. China's rapid rise has aroused the EU's instinctive worries.

The latest China policy document issued by the European Commission in October 2006 stressed the need to develop closer ties with China, and also conspicuously pointed out that China should shoulder more responsibilities.

This "partnership + responsibility" theory has set the tone for the EU's adjustment to China policy.

So far, the EU has not yet given full market economic status to China. In addition to technical reasons, the political pressure from the United States can not be a key factor.

The absence of market economy means that the self determined price of Chinese goods when entering the EU market is not recognized, and can only be measured by the EU's unreasonable surrogate price to determine whether it belongs to dumping.

Cheap Chinese goods are often the victims of punitive anti-dumping duties.

Second, from the economic perspective, the slow growth of the EU's own economic development in recent years and the rapid growth of China's economy have been greatly contrasting, and the trade deficit with China has been widening. This situation has aggravated the EU's trade protectionist tendencies.

Its performance is either based on its own technological superiority, and is based on the slogan of energy conservation and environmental protection. It has set up a variety of "green trade barriers" for China's emerging European countries to export products, or it is based on the protection of intellectual property rights and resorted to the WTO as a weapon to introduce new rules of market access for emerging countries such as China.

As the fastest and most effective means of trade protection, the traditional anti-dumping measures are still the most frequently used antivirus measure used by the European Union to restrict the economic impact of China.

Thirdly, the EU's decision-making system has played an auxiliary role in the anti-dumping issue to China.

As a Commonwealth of nations, the EU's decisions on any issue are restricted by every member state.

That is to say, anti-dumping complaints against Chinese goods brought by enterprises of one or one member countries often lead to the EU's anti-dumping measures to China as a whole.

Taking the latest case as an example, the European Commission decided to launch anti-dumping investigations on candles produced in China only because of the anti-dumping complaints filed by candles manufacturers in a few member countries such as Germany and Holland.

Looking back at the previous trade disputes between China and Europe, such as textiles and footwear, most of them are so.

This shows that if there is no scientific and reasonable framework for the comprehensive settlement of trade disputes, this case handling anti-dumping practice will remain an unavoidable phenomenon for a long time.

Fourthly, it should also be admitted that in some cases of anti-dumping, it is not rational to criticize the EU side simply. A few Chinese export enterprises do exist the principle of fair competition in terms of employment system and export links, which need to be corrected and improved.

At the same time, with the deepening of participation in international trade activities, Chinese enterprises urgently need to understand and master modern trade rules, learn to defend their legitimate interests by legal means, and enhance their ability to deal with anti-dumping litigation.

Experts suggest that Chinese enterprises must learn to use relevant rules to respond calmly when they deal with EU anti-dumping suits.

In fact, the EU has begun to realize that the provoking of trade disputes with China not only hurts the EU's own economic interests, but also is not conducive to the overall development of bilateral strategic partnership.

Indeed, the EU's anti-dumping duties on Chinese commodities have not only caused the impact of Chinese related enterprises, but also seriously damaged the economic interests of EU importers, retailers and consumers, and thus attracted strong opposition from them.

Moreover, as more and more EU enterprises are outsourcing their production to China and other developing countries in order to reduce costs, the EU's anti-dumping measures also make the interests of these pnational enterprises damaged, and the result of their anti-dumping is not worth the candle.

It is gratifying to note that the European Commission has begun to comprehensively reflect and evaluate trade policies, including anti-dumping, with a view to adjusting EU trade policy to the new era on the basis of fully consulting the public opinions.

Since the beginning of this year, the EU has abolished the quota system for textiles in China, which has strongly demonstrated that Sino EU trade relations are developing in a more positive direction.

The leaders of China and Europe have repeatedly expressed their political determination to deepen their cooperation.

The Tenth China EU summit held in Beijing in November last year agreed to set up a deputy prime minister level economic and trade high-level dialogue mechanism by the end of March this year, creating new opportunities for all effective solutions to the trade imbalance between China and Europe.

In response to the "China's economic threat theory" that has risen in Europe, Barroso, the chairman of the European Commission, gave a clear refutation during the summit meeting, stressing that China's development is an opportunity rather than a threat to the world.

This view has been generally affirmed by the European economic community.

It is believed that with the deepening of the cooperation in various fields between China and Europe, the bilateral economic and trade relations will become increasingly mature, and the pain of anti-dumping on Chinese goods in the EU will naturally be less and less.