Govt 'strongly dissatisfied' says MOFCOM official
The Chinese government strongly disagrees with the U.S.' rejection of China's market economy status and has already appealed about it to the WTO, domestic news site chinanews.com reported on Saturday, citing a Chinese trade official.
The comment comes after the U.S. told the WTO on Thursday that it opposed granting China market economy status, having submitted to the body a statement explaining its opposition in mid-November, media reports said.
The U.S. submitted the statement of opposition to the WTO in support of the EU's stance on China's case for the need to drop the "analogue country method," the unnamed official, who works for China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), was quoted as saying in the report.
The use of the analogue country method in anti-dumping probes against China should have been dropped following its expiration date of December 11, 2016, as stipulated in Article 15 on China's WTO membership, according to the official.
The analogue country method allows countries to base their judgment on prices in third countries when dealing with non-market economies to determine whether goods are being exported below cost to gain an unfair advantage.
The case is not related to being granted "market economy status" by the WTO, as the world body does not hold assessment standards for such a status anyway, the MOFCOM official noted, adding that the U.S. is not even the interested party in this particular case.
In the report, the MOFCOM official said that the U.S. has neglected WTO rules and has complicated the case by using the analogue country method during China's request for market economy status, a move that would also confuse the public.
"The Chinese government is strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposes such a move," the official was quoted as saying in the report from chinanews.com.
The official said that after China's reform and opening-up in the 1970s, the country has established, and has made continuous efforts to improve its socialist market economy system, and the efforts have gained widespread recognition among the international community.
The Chinese government hopes WTO members, including the U.S. and countries and regions in Europe, will comply with their obligations under the global organization and avoid adopting the discriminative analogue country method against China in anti-dumping probes in the future.
Geng Shuang, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a regular news briefing on Friday that the concept of a "non-market economy country" does not exist in the multilateral rules of the WTO and the use of the analogue country method to impose anti-dumping measures against China must be ended.
