-
China’s Carbon Wheelset Coming Of Age In The WTO War
Carbon Wheelset manteau cuir terminal blocks proximity switch manufacturers forged steel globe valve Apparel Accessories NAIL POLISH spring manufacturer escarpin talon haut chaussures en ligne best swiss watches cord knitting machine jupe plissée Ball valve Manufacturer Surge suppressors safety signs power Transformer flexo printing machine wedding dresses online authentic nfl jerseys
China’s Coming Of Age In The WTO WarPublished: 21 Apr 2009 17:15:33 PSTAuthor: Tina WangHONG KONG — Gone are the days when China shied away from launching suits against other countries before the World Trade Organization’s top court. Facing a distressed export sector and rising protectionism amid the global economic crisis, the Chinese government will get more comfortable and aggressive about lodging WTO complaints against the U.S., scholars and lawyers say.More From Forbes.com: In Pictures: The Hottest Young Royals In Pictures: World’s Most Dazzling Royal Jewels In Pictures: Wall Street’s 20 Highest Earners Global 2000: The Top 25 Biggest Companies The Asian Fab 50 This entailed a massive attitude shift for Beijing, from seeing WTO disputes as a failure of bilateral diplomacy to wielding the WTO dispute settlement mechanism as an extremely useful, and necessary, instrument of foreign trade policy. For Beijing, a more mature role as WTO plaintiff is also part and parcel of its growing assertiveness in the global economic order this year.”It looks as if China’s WTO trade disputes are becoming a healthy part of its foreign trade policy,” said Chin Leng Lim, an international law professor and associate dean at the University of Hong Kong. ”If I were Claire Reade [the chief counsel for China trade enforcement at the U.S. Trade Representative's Office], I’d be pretty worried, because China’s now the one doing the suing too.”On Friday, China filed a WTO complaint against the U.S. for effectively blocking chicken imports from China on health concerns. In January, the WTO, for the first time ever, created an expert panel to decide a suit that was initiated by China, which accused the U.S. of illegally levying duties against Chinese steel pipes, off-road tires and laminated woven sacks. ”The Chinese government is becoming increasingly confident in handling WTO-related disputes,” said Wang Jiangyu, a legal and trade scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. For Beijing, this is no small shift in both mentality and strategy. For years after China joined the WTO in 2001, the government preferred foreign diplomacy and bilateral negotiation over starting a legal dispute, said Liu Jingdong, vice-director of international economic law at the government think tank Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Taking the extraordinary step of suing another country meant that its diplomacy was a failure, said Liu, who has worked closely with the Ministry of Commerce and other government officials on global trade matters.”It takes a cultural switch for an East Asian country to conduct diplomacy by going to court,” Lim said. ”By and large, East Asian countries don’t like to sue other countries. It is a massive effort for them to switch that mode of thinking.” In the early years, China caved quickly when it found itself threatened with a lawsuit by the U.S. and E.U., researchers say. For example, in 2004, China immediately settled a WTO complaint by the U.S. that China illegally helped domestic semiconductor makers by taxing imports of integrated circuits. That was the first WTO dispute that China had to fend off. China then settled in two other major cases, involving its coke exports to the E.U. and Chinese anti-dumping duties on U.S. kraft linerboard, from 2004 to 2006. ”People were getting the impression that China simply didn’t want to litigate,” Lim said.The government was facing the WTO’s ”power to review our internal affairs, our statutes,” Liu said. And that made Beijing ”very unhappy” with trade complaints initiated against China, to which it responded with radical rhetoric, rather than legal engagement, Wang said. Beijing’s attitude was, ”this is all just absurd. We’re not going to mess with it,” said Steven Dickinson, a Qingdao-based partner at Harris Moure who has worked in Chinese law for 30 yeakitchen cabinets for sale 电磁流量计 クレジットカード 現金化 外汇保证金 深圳福田搬家公司 kitchen cabinets キャバクラ 求人 Superannuation 現金化