MOFTEC set up a special coordinating committee to help firms respond to foreign countries' dumping charges in March, officials said at a national working conference on dumping charges.

Sun Zhenyu, vice-minister of MOFTEC and also director of the coordinating committee, said MOFTEC was improving its rules to create a better legal framework for domestic firms to respond to foreign dumping charges.

He said MOFTEC will enhance its efforts on clearing up operations in the export business and increase penalties against extraordinarily low-priced exports.

Sun urged officials to improve the warning systems which advise domestic firms on prices and potential charges to help in the prevention of foreign dumping charges.

MOFTEC has set up warning systems on foreign dumping charges in major markets such as the United States, the European Union, Australia and the Republic of Korea, said officials.

Sun promised that MOFTEC will continue to negotiate with foreign governments on their recognition of China as a market economy.

With non-market economies, prices are widely viewed as being arbitrarily set and the normal values of exports are often computed by referring to prices in another country to determine if goods from the target country are being dumped.

Many Chinese companies have lost their cases in the past because countries, such as Singapore, that have higher labor and material costs than China were chosen as substitutes in computing the normal values of their exports.

Sun said domestic firms' reluctance to respond to foreign dumping charges is also a major reason why China has lost many cases in the past and now calls for more measures to encourage firms to respond.

"The response of firms to foreign dumping charges is very important in ensuring stable increases in China's exports,'' said Sun.

Owing to rapid increases in China's exports in the last few years, Chinese products have become major targets of foreign dumping charges.

China has the largest number of foreign dumping charges among all countries, according to WTO statistics.

Up to the end of March, 29 countries and regions had initiated 422 cases of anti-dumping investigations on Chinese exports, said MOFTEC.

These investigations involve more than 4,000 kinds of commodities such as metals, chemicals, textiles, food, machines, electronic goods and medical products with a total value of US$10 billion.

World Trade Organization statistics show about 35.7 percent of these anti-dumping cases have concluded with no anti-dumping taxes being levied on China's exports.

MOFTEC officials said that although the value of the commodities involved in foreign dumping charges is small compared with China's total exports, they have had considerable impact on involved companies and even on an entire sector of industry.

China's exports increased 27.8 percent year-on-year to US$249.2 billion last year, according to the General Administration of Customs.

Hundreds of officials from chambers of commerce, local trade and economic cooperation offices and some companies took part in the meeting hosted by MOFTEC April 11-13.

(China Daily 04/12/2001)