Amid the global financial crisis, bilateral trade friction between China and Europe is intensifying as trade volume increases, and the EU is expected to restrain the rise of internal trade protectionism, said Sun Yongfu, director general of the Department of European Affairs under the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), on August 31.
Sun said that bilateral trade friction between China and Europe is intensifying as trade volume increases, creating disputes involving case filing and investigation verdicts which clearly lack standards and do not conform to WTO principles. In response, China has submitted some cases to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism.
"Amid the financial crisis, some of China's major trading partners have showed clear signs of trade protectionism and there has been rising trade protectionism inside the EU," he said.
Sun added that Chinese leaders have expressed China's willingness to overcome the current crisis together with European countries on various occasions. China has said that it will firmly fight against trade protectionism and simultaneously adopt active and practical action. Since 2009, MOFCOM has actively supported intermediaries like commercial associations and industrial organizations to organize five batches of willing enterprises to visit Europe to purchase commodities and equipment that China required for its economic construction, during which an accumulative 23 billion U.S. dollars of contracts were signed.
"China expects the EU and its important member states to actively respond and restrain internal trade protectionism." He finally emphasized, "Trade friction is not high compared to the total volume of China-Europe trade. Both sides have relatively complete mechanisms. In general, trade friction is controllable."
China and the EU are each other's most important economic and trade partners. The EU is China's largest trade partner and source of imported technologies, while China is the EU's second largest trade partner. In the first half of 2009, China-EU trade volume stood at 160 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 16.8 percent of China's total foreign trade volume. The EU directly invested in 747 projects in China, involving 4.06 billion U.S. dollars of contracted foreign capital.
By People's Daily Online
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