June 13, 2007	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 27, 1428

BRUSSELS, June 12: China faces a backlash of “impatience and anger” if Beijing fails to redress increasingly lopsided trade relations with the European Union, EU trade chief Peter Mandelson warned on Tuesday.

In “frank, concentrated and prolonged” talks in Brussels with Chinese Trade Minister Bo Xilai, Mandelson stressed that the European Commission could be forced to take action against China if Beijing held back European exports.

“If European public opinion is not satisfied that the Chinese authorities are ... putting aside what we regard as unnecessary obstacles and barriers to our market access, then impatience and anger is going to rise,” he said.

As a result, “pressure is going to come on us at the (European) Commission to start limiting in different ways the access that Chinese producers and exporters have to our market,” he told journalists.

The European Commission is concerned about what it sees as Europe's increasingly unbalanced trade relationship with the growing Asian economic giant, blaming Chinese trade barriers and a lack of respect for intellectual property rights.—AFP