China announced in Shanghai Saturday the establishment of its
first monitoring and early-warning system for trade remedy measures
to handle increasing anti-dumping appeals from developed countries
after its accession to the World Trade Organization.
"The government will work to create a legal environment for fair
competition by ending our administrative interference in companies'
management," said Wang Qinhua, director of the Bureau of Industry
Injury Investigation under the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), who spoke highly of
the system.
The system was developed jointly by Shanghai Consulting Center
on WTO Issues, Shanghai Municipal Foreign Trade and Economic
Commission and Shanghai Information Center based on the agreements
on anti-dumping, anti-subsidies and remedy measures within the WTO framework.
Li Chenggang, deputy director of MOC's Fair Trade Bureau for
Imports and Exports, said the establishment of the early-warning
system will "effectively" help companies, industry associations and
governmental departments to quickly adjust to international markets
and greatly reduce trade disputes.
The system covers 189 varieties of export goods in 18
categories, mainly textile, home appliance, steel and furniture,
which account for some 60 percent of China's total exports to the
United States every year.
Registered companies will get the information like the
monitoring and early-warning services on the quantity, future
prices, dumping margins and industry injuries of Chinese products
exported to the United States, according to the system.
Companies can also obtain monitoring reports on US trade remedy
measures and have inquiry and training services to respond to
anti-dumping investigations or charges.
Enterprise can acquire such early-warning system on trade remedy
measures after they log on to two websites (www.sccwto.net and
www.shcei.gov.cn) and register a membership, according to Prof.Wang
Xinkui, president of Shanghai Consulting Center on WTO Issues.
Wang said the Ministry of Commerce might expand other
early-warning systems on trade disputes in other major harbor
cities before forging a nationwide world trade services system.
China has been confronted with increasing trade conflicts and
disputes with other WTO members since its entry to the WTO in
December 2001. WTO statistics show the agency's members had filed a
total of 2,416 anti-dump cases for investigation by the end of
2003, with about one seventh of them involving China.
(Xinhua News Agency June 6, 2004)