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EU safeguard measures strongly opposed
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-05-29 22:05
Ministry of Commerce spokesman Chong Quan yesterday stated the country's
opposition to the European Commission's decision to launch safeguard measures on
two categories of Chinese textiles.
A Chinese worker
sews a dress in a garment manufacturing company at Huaibei, east China's
Anhui province in this picture taken on May 19, 2005. China will raise
export tariffs on exports of 74 classes of clothing and textile products
from June 1, the Ministry of Finance said on Friday, a gesture that might
help to appease Western trading partners.
[newsphoto] |
"This procedure has hurt Chinese
textile manufacturers' rights granted by global trade integration and has sent a
wrong signal of trade protectionism to the European textile industry," he said.
Chong stressed that the Chinese Government expected to resolve the existing
trade disputes through negotiation with the European side.
The European Union (EU) put its argument to the World Trade Organization
(WTO) last Friday and asked China to adopt new measures to control its exports
of T-shirts and flax yarn to European countries.
However, the step does not mean an end to negotiations, nor that the EU will
take immediate action against Chinese textiles.
Instead, Claude Veron-Reville, the spokeswoman of European Trade Commissioner
Peter Mandelson, said consultations would be held between the two sides in the
coming weeks in a bid to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement.
Since the beginning of this year, China has adopted a series of measures to
control textile exports, including imposing export tariffs on 148 categories of
textiles and apparel products and strengthening self regulation among textile
manufacturers and exporters.
Also, China's Ministry of Finance announced this month to increase the
country's export tariffs on certain categories of textiles from June 1, in hopes
of easing the concerns of trade partners.
The export duty on T-shirts was increased from 0.2 yuan (2.4 US cents) to 0.8
yuan (9.6 US cents) per unit. And flax yarn was hit with a new tariff of 3 yuan
(36 US cents) per kilogram.
However, the European side argued that the impact of the tariffs would be too
little too late, and insisted that China take quantitative control measures to
curb the growth of exports.
The European Union claimed that its T-shirt imports from China rose 187 per
cent in the first four months of this year from a year earlier and that imports
of flax yarn also rose by 56 per cent year-on-year.
It said these increases had significantly hurt not only its domestic textile
manufacturing industry but the textile manufacturers of other developing
countries.
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