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'Non-market economy country' not a clear WTO concept: FM

Global Times

By Zhang Hongpei Source:Global Times Published: 2017/12/1 22:13:39

Trump administration makes public China rebuff

The concept of a "non-market economy country" does not exist in the multilateral rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the surrogate country approach to calculating anti-dumping measures against China must be ended, a foreign ministry spokesman said Friday.

"In accordance with Article 15 of the accession protocol signed when China joined the WTO [in 2001], the surrogate country approach is required to be expired on December 11, 2016, which is definite and undoubted," Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular news briefing on Friday.

"The expiration has nothing to do with the standard of market economy status that whether China has met or not," Geng said, noting that some countries and people are apparently confusing the public to avoid their own responsibilities.

"All the WTO members should keep their promise, comply with international rules and fulfill their obligations on international agreements," he said.

The comment came after the US President Donald Trump's administration formally rejected treating China as a market economy, a decision submitted to the WTO made public on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The decision filing marks the first time the US government has publicly declared its position, the report said.

"The decision shows the US is resorting to the rivalry game, a tactic different from the cooperation game embodied by Trump's visit to China, during which deals worth $253.5 billion were signed," Bai Ming, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, told the Global Times on Friday.

Both the US and EU have broken their commitment to end the surrogate country practice to China last year.

"If they continue to do so, their economic and trade relations with China will be affected due to the bad cooperation atmosphere," Bai said.

The reason the US and EU did not grant China market economy status was mainly due to the discrepancy between the standard they hold and China's economic system, Sang Baichuan, director of the Institute of International Business at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, told the Global Times on Friday.

"Actually there is no strict definition of market economy standard in the WTO," Sang said. "The US and the EU also have their own standards on the concept, and different countries have their own market economy models, so there is not an applicable standard to the whole world."

"China should continue to deepen its economic reform and opening-up, to realize market economy status early, while on the other hand, it should urge the related parties to shoulder their responsibilities or resort to the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO," Sang said.