The
Ministry of Commerce
(MOFCOM) sounded the alarm on overseas technical trade barriers
against China's exports while vowing to enhance countermeasures.
Wang Hui, director of MOFCOM's Science and Technology Department,
said China would make full use of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) rules and fight tit-for-tat against discriminatory and
improper overseas technical barriers.
He
suggested domestic companies should be encouraged to adopt advanced
international standards, acquire international certifications and
play an active part in the decree and revision of international
standards and rules.
Competitive industries, including tea, Chinese medicine and silk,
should try to promote national and industrial standards around the
world, so as to establish their advantageous position on the
international market, said Wang.
Low-quality products should not be allowed to sell to other
countries as these destroy the image of Chinese commodities, he
added.
Wang said MOFCOM is working hard to improve its information service
system through closely monitoring foreign technical trade measures
and giving timely advice on countermeasures to guide domestic
companies' risk evasion.
The latest MOFCOM investigation indicates foreign technical trade
barriers are having an increasingly bad effect on China's
exports.
MOFCOM investigated 21 categories of export commodities in six
industries across the country, including food stuffs, native
produce and animal by-products, light industry products, machinery
and electronic products, textiles, minerals, metals and chemicals
and medicines and medicare products.
The method combines sampling and case studies.
The last investigation into the impact of technical barriers on
Chinese exports was conducted in 2000 by sampling.
The latest investigation shows 71 percent of Chinese exporters and
39 percent of Chinese commodities ran into technical barriers with
estimated total losses of US$17 billion in 2002, or 5.2 percent of
the country's total exports that year.
These figures were up five percentage points, 14 percentage points,
US$6 billion and 0.7 percentage points respectively on the results
of the 2000 investigation.
Technical trade barriers set up by the European Union, the United
States and Japan accounted for 95 percent of the losses.
These technical barriers hit labor-intensive products especially
badly. About 90 percent of exporters of food stuffs, native produce
and animal by-products suffered losses of US$9 billion last
year.
Meanwhile, technical barriers against Chinese exports of high-tech
products and machinery and electronic products are on the rise.
South China's Guangdong Province, East China's Jiangsu, Zhejiang
and Shandong provinces and Shanghai Municipality each suffered
losses of over US$1 billion due to foreign technical trade
barriers, the investigation revealed.
(China Daily June 11, 2003)