Hu Weidong, chief analyst with Xiangcai Securities'
research and development center, was quoted in yesterday's
Shanghai Securities News as saying that, though textile
trade frictions are likely to intensify, the chance of a trade war
is slim as the proportion of textiles in China's total export
volume decreases.
Since global quotas were scrapped on January 1, the
US and EU have set limits on textile products imported from China,
saying that surges in Chinese imports disrupted their markets.
China and the EU signed a memorandum on Chinese
textile products to Europe in June and reached an agreement in
September, but an agreement with US has not been reached after six
rounds of negotiations.
The last round of talks with the US was held in
October 12 and 13, and the American side has imposed limits on nine
categories of Chinese textile products so far.
Textile products and?raw materials' share of
total export volume began to fall in the 1990s and was 20 percent
in 2003. The percentage of gross export products in China's GDP
showed an increasing trend and reached 30 percent the same
year.
Hu said one way to cope with the current situation
was for domestic textile manufactures to follow voluntary export
limits as steel companies did to deal with rocketing iron ore
prices.
Unlimited exports would impair the interests of
textile firms in the export destination countries, Hu said, who
would adopt countermeasures that would hurt the interests of
Chinese textile companies.
Voluntary export limits could also help improve the
quality of exports, according to some experts, since with volume
limited higher value products could bring more profits for textile
companies.
(China.org.cn by Yuan Fang October 26, 2005)