China Economic Review: Technical answer to trade disputes

World trade in modern times is often a cycle of disputes. When one country finds a solution to evade punitive trade practice raised by another, another problem awaits. The trick to winning modern trade wars might lie in technical measures.

Following a European Commission assertion that its members would never import apple juice from China for it contained trace amounts of a harmful chemical, fruit beverage manufacturers urged fruit growers in Shaanxi and Gansu, apple production bases in northwestern China, to reduce the use of chemicals on apple trees.

Thanks to a technical advance, China can now measure chemical residues in its apple juice and has adopted similar standards with Europeans. And the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) formed a research team to devise checks for the hazardous element, a high-level technological difficulty for which the US Department of Agriculture has solicited solutions from global scientists.

The test constitutes part of an ambitious project to build capacity in ensuring food safety.

In 1998, the Chinese government announced that food supply, primarily in grain output, was no longer a lingering problem for its population of 1.3 billion. Food safety became a new focus.

With a state budget of 150 million yuan (about 18 million US dollars), magnified by funds of more than one billion yuan (120 million US dollars) from local governments and relevant companies, MOST organized a task force for improving food safety-related technologies.

A latest touchstone of the MOST's job was the outbreak of bird flu. Using Chinese-made check-boxes, quarantine experts could ascertain bird flu virus in less than four hours. Before that, they needed 21 days to find the virus.

"The reliable and valid virus check-boxes helped us control the bird flu, and no single person got contaminated," Chen Junshi told Xinhua Sunday. Chen is the principal investigator with the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and coordinator of the food safety project.

In addition to inventing quick-responding check-boxes, Chen acknowledged, China has tried to launch a national web for monitoring food, both domestically-made and imported.

Li Cong, who directs the technical center of the Zhejiang Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, leads a research team on developing computerized database for food flowing through Chinese borders.

"We get mountains of data yearly on food quarantine information which reminds us of obvious and potential threats to our health," Li said.

Following the food safety alert system adopted by the EU, China is now developing a more sophisticated computer-based alert system.

"The key to an effective system lies in excavation of useful information," Li said, adding that their analytical work on the information could contribute to better decision making by state quarantine watchdogs.

"We used to be primary targets of developed nations under their food trade barriers," noted Wu Yongning, a CDC scientist who is well-versed in chemical pollutants monitoring. "Now we are cultivating our own active system on food safety."

In food producing and processing, China has adopted much stricter norms guided by the hazard analysis critical control point system (HACCP). Under its own HACCP guidelines, China applied for 58 food safety standards from international agencies such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), the World Organization for Animal Health, the International Organization for Standardization and the World Trade Organization.

The technical standard drafted by Chinese researchers for reduction of aflatoxin in nut products was adopted by the CAC in March for further discussion. It was the first ever international technical standard proposed by the Chinese.

"We should never simply abide by international standards, but should strive to have a say in creating those standards with consideration of our own conditions and our own care for people's health," Wu said.

Chinese standards don't always lag behind international ones. China insists that the content of one chromium compound be no more than 0.2 microgram per kilogram, while the Japanese hope the pending international standard will remain at 0.4 to 0.5 microgram.

"We have targeted resolving technological problems," said Xu Jun, a MOST official who oversees the project. "With the technical know-how, law enforcement is much more crucial in ensuring food safety."

Source: Xinhua