On Chinese Legal Countermeasures To Anti-dumping

The anti-dumping, one of trade remedy measures which is allowed by WTO to resist dumping and one of major practices for many countries and regions in the world to implement the trade protectionism, has a great impact to our country. Since European Communities initiated the first anti-dumping investigation into China’s exports in 1979, China has gradually come to be the biggest victim of anti-dumping worldwide. The anti-dumping report issued by WTO says, "China is still the country investigated most frequently because of the anti-dumping" and "exports from China have still suffered the most frequent final anti-dumping measures."China’s exports meet the constituent elements of dumping according to the anti-dumping law of the country which imports goods from other countries, which is the premise why the anti-dumping measures have been taken against China. The anti-dumping laws contain international treaties, conventions and domestic laws. The WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement is a vital international convention concerning the anti-dumping, which is legally binding universally among WTO member states. It stipulates that anti-dumping measures could only be used in cases conforming to the stipulation of Article 6 of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) in 1994, which defines that if a country bought the commercial products from another country at the price lower than the normal value of the product so that it would cause substantial damage or the threat of substantial damage of an established industry within the territory or substantially retard the establishment of a new domestic industry, which constitutes dumping. When it comes to the verdict by the authorities of the importing country, it would involve such problems as the normal value, the normal course of trade, the identification of damage, products of the same kind, the domestic industries, causal relationships, and other specific issues. Because China belongs to a country without market economy conditions, it would involve considerable controversial issues such as the surrogate country system and separate tax rate. All these problems should be solved before we study the issue of anti-dumping.Since WTO allows its member states to take anti-dumping measures to protect the fair trade order and resist illegal competition, the anti-dumping law has become a pivotal part of trade laws among those WTO member states. After entering into WTO, China is both a trading power as well as the biggest victim of anti-dumping. Anti-dumping is an unavoidable reality as Chinese economy integrates into the mainstream of the world economy. Therefore, anti-dumping against China has certainly been inevitable, long-term and complex which couldn’t be fundamentally changed in a short term. It is imperative to carefully deal with it in an unbiased way. In the process of handling the anti-dumping in China, many problems have occurred which impacted greatly on China, such as the surrogate country system, general causal relationships between dumping and damage, the sunset review (or expiry review), the separate tax rate, the countervailing & anti-dumping investigation, the environmental dumping and labor force dumping, etc. These problems, on the one hand, have resulted from the unreasonable and fuzzy regulations in The WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement which provides the authorities of anti-dumping in the importing countries with greater discretionary power; on the other, it has resulted from the facts that the importing countries have violated and abused anti-dumping measures in The WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement, which has given rise to the problems that other countries have identified China’s normally international trade as dumping, while the low-degree dumping has been regarded as the high-degree one, which has consequently resulted in great hindrance to the development of export trade in China.Anti-dumping is not only a domestic issue but also an international one; it is not only an issue on trade, but also one on economy, laws, politics and business. Therefore, dealing with anti-dumping is also a very complex systematic engineering which needs to be coped with from both the international and domestic levels, and involves measures taken by the government, industry associations and enterprises.Internationally speaking, China can respond to the anti-dumping through following measures. If other member nations took advantage of the unreasonable and fuzzy regulations in The WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement to take anti-dumping measures against China, we could propose an amendment of concerned regulations in The WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement, or we could make reasonable explanation for it. If the anti-dumping measures taken by other member states did not comply with concerned regulations in The WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement, we could settle it through WTO dispute settlement mechanism. Once we won, we could require an amendment according to its decision. If any Chinese exporting enterprise disagreed with the anti-dumping administrative measures taken by the authorities of anti-dumping, they could take full advantage of the system of the anti-dumping judicial review to seek for the judicial remedy from the importing countries. Since China is not a market economy country, when facing discrimination during the investigation, we could strive for a reasonable treatment or even a treatment that market economy countries could enjoy through negotiations with other member states.Domestically speaking, in order to respond to the anti-dumping from other countries, Chinese government should take such measures as strengthening related legislation, striving for the treatment that market economy countries could enjoy, promoting the service consciousness of government organs in dealing with the anti-dumping, and facilitating industrial transformation. The industry associations should coordinate different sides and provide better service so as to establish respondent fund and help enterprises respond to suits effectively etc., while the enterprises themselves should change ideas of exporting low-priced products for competition, conduct internal coordination and answer charges in court effectively, and alter the present situations that exports are inferior products in a disorder manner. Dealing with the anti-dumping is indeed a systematical project, which needs to synthesize the concerted efforts and active cooperation of governments, enterprises, competent authorities of foreign trading and concerned associations.According to The Protocol on the Accession of the People’s Republic of China to the WTO, China will be a country with market economy conditions automatically in December,2016, and the importing member countries could not calculate the normal value of China’s exports by adopting the surrogate country system. Thus, should China’s problem in responding to the anti-dumping be solved smoothly? The situation is not optimistic, for developed western countries would not abandon such effective measures as the anti-dumping to protect their own products and to resist Chinese exports. Actually, many countries begin to accuse China of its environmental dumping and labor force dumping, which are manifestations of new protectionism. Meanwhile, foreign cases concerning China’s circumventing anti-dumping investigation grow fast, which becomes a new-round trade barrier facing China after the anti-dumping. It will further cripple the ability of China’s exporting enterprises to respond to the anti-dumping. Compared with traditional anti-dumping, these issues are more difficult and urgent to be dealt with. Facing the new development of anti-dumping, we could not continue to use previous solutions any longer, otherwise it would turn out to be futile. Therefore, we should expound the deficiencies of newly-developed anti-dumping in theory, understand fully the concerned articles in the international agreements, and then apply them to seek for effective legislative solutions in practice to protect international trade order and guarantee the normal export of China’s enterprises.