China Makes Full Effort To Prepare For Trade Friction "Tough Battle"

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, 6 countries and regions, including the US, Europe, Canada and the mainland, launched 13 anti-dumping and countervailing investigations in 1~2 this year.

Among them, 11 anti-dumping cases, 2 countervailing cases, involving a total of 1 billion 640 million dollars, the number and amount of cases increased by 116% and 455% respectively.

The United States launched 337 investigations against me, 4, unchanged from last year.

Of the 11 anti-dumping cases, 3 were from the European Union, and mainly targeted at high-end steel products such as cold rolled stainless steel and steel strand, involving more than 1 billion dollars.

In 2008, China's manufacturing industry will make full preparations for trade frictions, which is a topic of no suspense.

Not only is the failure of China's auto parts case in the WTO preliminary ruling recently, but the trade frictions faced by China's manufacturing industry are quietly upgrading in the past two months.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, 6 countries and regions, including the US, Europe, Canada and the mainland, launched 13 anti-dumping and countervailing investigations in 1~2 this year.

Among them, 11 anti-dumping cases, 2 countervailing cases, involving a total of 1 billion 640 million dollars, the number and amount of cases increased by 116% and 455% respectively.

The United States launched 337 investigations against me, 4, unchanged from last year.

Of the 11 anti-dumping cases, 3 were from the European Union, and mainly focused on cold rolled stainless steel, twisted steel and other high-end steel products, involving more than 1 billion dollars.

In fact, since 2007, the forms of trade friction encountered by China have emerged in an endless stream: steel is replacing light industrial products such as textiles and shoes, and has become a new focus of anti-dumping. "Countervailing measures", especially the "anti-dumping and countervailing investigation", have brought China's manufacturing to a new dilemma; "product quality and food safety" have been exaggerated or even misrepresented by foreign media; WTO dispute settlement cases against China are also common.

Market forecasts show that in the coming period, countries around the world will pay more attention to China's rapid development from a global and strategic perspective, and the trade frictions facing China will become even more prominent.

In 2008, China's "offensive and defensive warfare" against trade frictions will become more intense. The key issues we need to pay attention to are steel, textiles, mechanical and electrical products and information products.

With the rise of trade nationalism, international trade frictions will increase increasingly in the case of slow growth in international trade.

In the face of the improvement of China's international status, some countries still embrace the Cold War mentality and constantly renew the China threat theory.

Chen Deming, Minister of Commerce, has expressed this view in many public places this year.

He pointed out that some developing countries are competing with Chinese products and have increased friction with me, accounting for 60% of China's anti-dumping cases.

The economic and trade frictions continue to expand from anti-dumping and intellectual property to new fields such as product quality, climate and environment, countervailing measures.

Every year, the trade losses caused by technical barriers amount to about US $20 billion.

Many signs have shown that the focus of trade friction faced by Chinese exports has shifted from the textile products such as textiles and shoes in 2005 to the current ~2006 products.

Li Ling, director of the Bureau of import and Export Fair of the Ministry of Commerce, told reporters that in 2007, 19 countries (regions) launched nearly 80 trade relief investigations against anti-dumping, countervailing measures, safeguard measures and so on. During the same period, the United States launched 17 intellectual property rights investigations against me in 337 countries.

The number of anti-dumping cases confronting China has ranked first in the world for 12 consecutive years, and the number of countervailing investigations has also ranked first in the world.

To be sure, Western protectionism has risen, pointing directly to China.

A recent overseas survey shows that 50% of Germans and 70% of Americans believe that trade liberalization will reduce employment opportunities. European countries that originally advocated trade liberalization, such as Germany and Austria, began to waver, and some countries in southern Europe even strongly advocated trade protection.

In response to the escalating trade frictions, Minister Chen Deming has made a "offensive and defensive" plan at this year's business meeting: first, the use of multilateral rules to deal with trade disputes.

We should strengthen coordination with stakeholders and strive for more support.

Do a good job in responding to the WTO dispute cases, and strive for the best result for me.

Other members should also be good at using the WTO dispute settlement mechanism to damage our interests.

Two, we should do a good job in dealing with major bilateral trade frictions.

We should further improve the early warning and monitoring mechanism of trade friction, closely follow the latest trend of trade friction, and enhance the foresight and initiative in dealing with the work.

In particular, we should properly respond to countervailing cases and try to prevent the spread of countervailing cases. At the same time, we should guide the key sensitive industries to establish dialogue mechanisms with foreign countries and avoid friction as far as possible.

We will continue to push the countries concerned to recognize our market economy status and create favorable conditions for enterprises to respond to anti-dumping actions.

Three, we should use trade remedy measures to protect domestic industries according to law.

We should further improve the early warning mechanism of industrial damage, do a good job in expanding the database of industrial safety, and conduct in-depth investigation and evaluation of industrial competitiveness.

We should seriously investigate and study the areas where unfair trade measures are damaged in high-tech industries, agriculture and service industries, and implement trade relief according to law.

While launching an anti-dumping investigation cautiously and moderately, we should actively study the use of other trade remedy measures, track the implementation effect of trade remedy measures, and pay attention to the industrial development trend and the impact on domestic upstream and downstream industries.

"Iron must also be hard."

The most popular saying is precisely that Chinese enterprises should deeply understand and really put into practice.

Li Ling suggested that enterprises should not only learn more about the knowledge of WTO rules and trade remedy investigation, but also actively respond to lawsuits and solidarity. It is more important to establish and improve the internal management mechanism, standardize management in R & D, production, marketing, accounting and so on, and establish a sound financial accounting system and intellectual property protection system.

In addition, enterprises must comply with business ethics and market rules, actively resist such acts as disrupting export business order such as low price bidding, improve product quality and added value, adjust and optimize product mix, and try to diversify products and diversify the market in the choice of export market.

For the fierce countervailing investigation, the Ministry of Commerce experts stressed to this reporter: "countervailing investigations do not mean that we must cancel all subsidies, but we should make reasonable use of subsidies according to the WTO rules. The key is not to violate the WTO rules" red line ".

In addition, the government is duty bound to take the lead.

If the relevant departments of the policy are not well coordinated, the government of the investigating country has the right to decide according to the information it knows, and it is likely to make unfair judgments on the enterprises involved.

"In many cases, the developed countries such as the United States tend to be predominant, misunderstand China's relevant industrial policies and financial policies, and even know why they are untenable. They also make a pre emptive investigation and wait for you to defend yourself. If they do not fight, they will not only suffer in vain, but will also be regarded as timid."

Liang Yaowen, director of the Guangdong Provincial Department of foreign trade and economic cooperation, said: "if we encounter unreasonable accusations, we must fight against it and make a rational and positive response. We should be prepared to fight a bad battle."