China lodges WTO complaint over U.S. probes into Chinese coated paper

2007-09-15 06:15:57 [ Big Normal Small ]    　Comment

    BEIJING, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- China has requested WTO dispute settlement consultations with the United States over its treatment of Chinese coated paper, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced on Friday.

    The announcement came six months after the U.S. Department of Commerce made a preliminary decision to impose countervailing duties on coated paper imported from China.

    It was the first time that China alone filed a WTO case against the U.S. since China's entry to the world trade body.

    China, which has always been willing to solve trade disputes through bilateral consultations, had to do so to protect the interests of its enterprises when the negotiations failed, according to the MOC.

    From last November to July, the U.S. had launched five anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations into Chinese coated paper and steel tubes, which involved 635 Chinese enterprises with70,000 employees and goods worth 860 million U.S. dollars.

    Five dual investigations against Chinese products in less than a year was unprecedented in the history of world trade, Gao Hucheng, an MOC official said earlier this year.

    The U.S. decision not only violated WTO rules, but also went against a 23-year-old U.S. bipartisan policy of not applying the anti-subsidy law on imports from a non-market economy, according to the MOC.

    The U.S. insisted on treating China as a non-market economy in defiance of the great achievements China had made in its economic system reforms.

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