GENEVA: China took disputes with Australia over railway wheel hubs, wind towers and stainless steel sinks to the WTO, days after Australia took a wine dispute to the world trade body, as bilateral trade tensions escalate.
The move is seen as “reciprocal treatment” by the Chinese side after Australia took two trade disputes, over barley and wine, to the WTO in the past six months, analysts said. If Australia refuses to end discriminatory trade policies against Chinese companies, China could take more complaints to the WTO, given the abundance of Australia’s abuse of trade remedy measures, they warned. China has filed three complaints with the WTO over Australian anti-dumping and countervailing tariffs levied on railway wheel hubs, wind towers and stainless steel sinks imported from China, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said in a statement on Thursday.
At a press conference on the same day, MOFCOM spokesperson Gao Feng told reporters that China is opposed to the abuse of trade remedy measures and will defend the interests of Chinese companies as well as the authority and effectiveness of the multilateral trade mechanism and the WTO.
The methods through which Australia drew its conclusions are flawed, Gao said, noting that such methods violate the WTO’s Anti-dumping Agreement and Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures.
It is hoped that the Australian side could take concrete steps to rectify its wrongdoings, avoid confrontational measures, and bring the two nations’ trade ties back to normal as soon as possible, Gao said. The WTO faces unprecedented challenges, Gao said, and China is opposed to the abuse of trade remedy measures, and it believes that such measures are detrimental to the seriousness and authority of WTO rules. Moves by the two countries to send more complaints to the WTO indicate a further escalation of bilateral trade tensions, Chen Hong, director of the Australian Studies Center at East China Normal University (Shanghai), told the Global Times, adding that China will not hesitate to take more complaints with Australia to the WTO, if the former refuses to end discriminatory trade policies against China.
– The Daily Mail-Global Times News exchange item
