May 8, 2002	Wednesday	Safar 24, 1423

BEIJING: Faced with worsening unemployment crisis and targeted by a growing number of anti-dumping cases, China is making a strong bid to champion the global free trade campaign in a direction that favours the developing world. Last week saw two of China’s top-ranking trade officials attacking rich countries on the misuse of world trade rules and calling for better protection of the interests of the developing countries.

“The interests and requests of the developing members have not been adequately taken into consideration and ensured for a long time,” Sun Zhenyu, China’s first ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), said in Geneva. Addressing a WTO symposium in his first public speech at the organisation since China joined the global trade club in December, Sun said it was high time this situation was changed. He argued that China, as a developing member of the WTO, would work hard with other developing members to this end.

Sun’s pledges were reiterated later in the week by Long Yongtu, vice minister of foreign trade and China’s chief WTO negotiator. He called for the establishment of a “fair, just and reasonable new international economic order” that will take into consideration the balance of the interests between developed and developing countries”.

Long was speaking at the mid-term review conference of the 10th session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development held in Bangkok.

While lauding the success of the WTO members in launching a new round of multilateral talks at the Doha meeting last year, Long said uncertainties were clouding the future of the talks.

That is because the protectionist lobbies in the developed world, including the Untied States, have stepped up efforts to use anti-dumping cases and safeguard actions to ward off against what they call “cheap imports” from the developing world.

China’s push to become a key player in the new round of trade negotiations comes as President George W Bush’s administration is preparing to sign an agricultural bill, which will substantially increase price guarantees for major crops such as corn and wheat and create new subsidies for others such as soybeans. The bill has been denounced by academic economists and free trade advocates as an affront to the developing world and that runs counter to the Bush administration’s own free trade rhetoric.

Detractors say that the world’s developing countries had agreed to lower their domestic tariffs in the expectation of getting access to North American and European markets, but that the reality has seen a wave of new trade barriers raised by the developed countries.

“While China is opening its market, domestic industries and agriculture are facing great pressure from foreign products flowing into China, especially the agricultural products heavily subsidised by rich countries,” Sun said.

One of the most glaring examples of such behaviour came in March, when the Untied States slapped steep tariffs on steel imports in an effort to help its ailing steel industry.

China, together with Japan, South Korea, the European Union, Brazil and Russia is among the hardest hit by the US tariffs. Sun told the WTO symposium that in the first quarter, China’s steel industry experienced nearly a 34 per cent drop in exports and a 17.5 per cent increase in imports.

The Chinese newspaper “Economic Daily” reported in April that China is now the world’s biggest target for anti-dumping cases, with nearly 500 investigations filed by 30 different countries and regions.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, the anti-dumping cases filed against China have resulted in losses for Chinese exports of more than $10 billion.

“China is highly critical of some (WTO) members abusing the current rules of anti-dumping, countervailing and safeguards, because China is the biggest victim of such practices in the world,” Sun said.

China’s criticism of the double standards employed by some rich countries is fuelled by concerns of rising unemployment in the country. With China’s WTO entry and heightened international al competition, millions of unskilled people are being laid off from traditional state-owned industries as other firms just disappear. —Dawn/InterPress Service.