International trade protectionism has been found on the rise in the recent two years, and anti-dumping cases against China have increased sharply.
The year 1999 alone saw the occurrence of 43 such cases. May 17 witnessed the European Commission announcing the anti-dumping investigation against Chinese energy-saving lamps filed on the prosecution of German Osram SLI and Dutch Philips.
More than 100 domestic enterprises with millions of dollars of export products were involved in the case, which has seized most of the Chinese enterprises with a surprise. Through arduous negotiation, Shanghai Feiya, Xiamen Shengli won back their "market economy" position and others the treatment of individual tariff rate. This case has once again sounded a warning that to adopt measures to cope with the anti-dumping is something in the imminence.
China has become the biggest victim of anti-dumping. As one of the three trade remedial measures allowed by WTO, anti-dumping is the most commonly practiced measures resorted by all countries to regulate trade orders and boycott unjust competition.
Since the anti-dumping case by EU in 1979 against China's exported saccharin and salt, the number of cases have so far been high up to 378, ranging from chemical industry of five minerals, light and textile industries, livestock and produces, to mechanical and electrical products, as well as medicare, with a total of 4000 types of products involved. Among them, 60 percent of the cases were verified tenable with the rate of lawsuits ranking the top in the world. China was made a victim, suffering the heaviest losses in the international anti-dumping cases.
The negative effect brought about by the anti-dumping mainly manifests in exports. An anti-dumping case will last more than one year from filing the case to the verdict being made, but the tax-levying period will extend to five years. Many of China's export goods like color TV to the EU, potassium to the US have suffered more than 10 years of taxation. What is more is that once an anti-dumping product was levied by a country, it sometimes means not only the loosing of the market in that country, but also a chain-reaction due to the flux of the products into other markets, and finally resulted in the complete shutdown of the exported goods.
According to estimation on the conservative side, the anti-dumping cases against China in the last 20 years have led to a loss of US$10 billion.
China's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation has taken some measures to give rewards to those enterprises who are taking a positive attitude in answering the cases and punishment to those who react passively to them.
From a long-term point of view, an effective way to cope with the anti-dumping accusation is to enhance the technological contents of the export products and added value to strengthen their competitiveness for export so as to win high price by high quality. Enterprises should also make an earnest study of the related laws in alien lands and foster a group of anti-dumping professionals so soon as possible.
(People's Daily 09/28/2000)
