'Mirror strategy' urged as tactic to fight protectionism

China should adopt a "mirror strategy" to fight trade protectionism and reduce the influence of special interest groups on foreign government policy-making without creating new trade friction, a Chinese expert said at a forum Wednesday.

"We are not deliberately seeking trade friction, but active and resolute countermeasures (a mirror strategy) can become a bargaining chip for China in trade negotiations and prevent developed economies from instigating more trade disputes," Ju Jiandong, director of the Center for International Economics Research at Tsinghua University, said at a forum on the global value chain in Beijing Wednesday.

"Mirror strategy" refers to a tactic of reciprocation. If one country imposes trade restrictions on a specific industry or firms of another, the latter will impose similar trade restrictions in return.

According to Ju, the strategy can induce political competition among different lobby groups and prevent them from lobbying governments to set favorable policies.

Ju said China's solar trade dispute with the EU is a success case for the mirror strategy.

In the latest high-profile trade dispute between China and the EU, the EU announced it would impose an interim anti-dumping duty of 11.8 percent on imports of all Chinese solar panel products on July 4.

The next day, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced it would launch an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probe into EU wine exports.

MOFCOM officials said the probe was a fair-trade investigation rather than a tit-for-tat attack against the EU's preliminary ruling on Chinese solar panels.

"The precondition for using the mirror strategy is that the power of the two trade partners is balanced. But in terms of power, China can't match the EU or the US," Zhang Xiangchen, director of the Policy Research Department at MOFCOM, said at the same forum.

"To resolve trade disputes, China should rely on the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), although the WTO mechanism may not be efficient in settling the disputes," Zhang said.

Last week, China's commerce minister Gao Hucheng said China and the EU have agreed to solve the ongoing solar trade dispute through negotiations.

EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said later that any agreement with China over the solar panel dispute would also help resolve a Chinese anti-subsidy probe into EU wine exports imposed right after the EU decision.