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Trade-Status Battle Heats Up

Beijing Steps Up Its Effort

To Overturn Designation

As Nonmarket Economy

By CHARLES HUTZLER

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

June 24, 2004

BEIJING -- China, normally under pressure from the U.S. and European Union on trade, is trying to turn the tables, urging the major trading partners to change an obscure classification that is hurting Chinese exporters.

Beijing recently has stepped up a year-old lobbying effort to overturn the classification -- embedded in its terms of entry to the World Trade Organization -- which designates China a "nonmarket economy." The status has made it easier for trading partners to impose penalties on hundreds of millions of dollars of various Chinese exports, from bras to bedroom furniture. And Beijing's campaign is gaining ground. Trading partners from Thailand to New Zealand have agreed to change the classification. The EU will issue a preliminary response on China's request for a status change by June 30, and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao as well as two vice premiers voiced concerns about the designation to visiting U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans this week.

GROWING PAINS

China Moves to Limit Borrowings in Dollars

Mr. Evans, at the end of two days of meetings, said yesterday that Washington wants to devise a road map for China to follow, but it is likely to be a long haul. The Chinese government must stop micromanaging the economy, he said, and roll back controls over large enterprises, raw materials, real estate, the currency and its banking system. China must make some of these changes, he said, to meet qualifications as a market economy set out in U.S. law. "There's a false perception that there's a lot of room for us to make a decision on who's a market economy," Mr. Evans said in an interview.

Beijing's full-court press shows how China is gearing up to pursue its own trade agenda. Mr. Evans said that in his meetings he also brought up America's politically explosive trade deficit with China, $124 billion last year, checked on China's progress in curbing piracy of intellectual property and discussed possible U.S. cooperation in building nuclear-energy and other power plants. But just as the administration of President George W. Bush is under pressure at home to prove it is getting China to pare its lopsided trade surplus, Beijing is trying to show Chinese businesses that it can push back.

China needs "to use the rules to its advantage," Zhang Xiangchen, a Chinese Ministry of Commerce official who works on WTO affairs, said Tuesday. Mr. Zhang said he remembered that during the painstaking negotiations to join the WTO, China's chief negotiator, Long Yongtu, told his aides: "China will one day set the rules for others to follow."

The nonmarket-economy designation has become a test case of this more-energetic policy. Under its WTO agreement, China can be considered a nonmarket economy until 2015. The classification allows trading partners to compare the prices of Chinese products with those in a surrogate country -- India, in the case of the U.S. and EU -- in determining whether Chinese goods are being sold abroad at unfairly low prices. The result: The U.S. and EU filed 96 antidumping cases against China in the past two years, according to the Ministry of Commerce. The U.S. has imposed antidumping duties on textiles, televisions, and, just last week, wooden bedroom furniture -- buoyant sectors that accounted for nearly one-fifth of Chinese exports last year.

Some Chinese furniture makers are fuming over these actions. Yang Xingding, president of Starcorp Furniture Co. in Shanghai, one of seven companies that account for 40% of the exports to the U.S., said Starcorp tried to prove to U.S. officials that it was operating on market principles and without government support, but it still was slapped with a 24.34% tariff. Mr. Yang said he stopped exporting to the U.S. in May and criticized the Chinese government for offering little help.

Still, the furniture tariffs, ranging from 4.9% to 198%, were lower than the 400% that U.S. industry sought, and the lower penalties were an acknowledgment that some Chinese companies are making headway toward free-market operations. Grant Aldonas, the U.S. Commerce Department's undersecretary for international affairs who is traveling with Mr. Evans, said one purpose of the trip was to go over issues where China needs to make progress. These include China's need to move toward a convertible currency and bargaining rights for workers, he said. A joint panel was set up in April to deal with specific issues, he said, and a senior Commerce official will visit Beijing in early July to hold more talks.