It is absolutely not reasonable for the European Union and the United States to put restriction upon China's textile products by citing Article 242, Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai said on Monday.

At a press conference, Bo said that neither EU nor U.S. could prove China's textile products "do disturb and threaten the trade order" in the two markets.

"It is unreasonable and unscientific" to re-impost restriction based on primary data in the first three or four months, he said, adding that both EU and the US did not provide detailed statistics to China.

In the first four months, the trade volume of China's textile exports totaled 31.2 billion US dollars, up 18.4 percent compared with the same period of last year, or five percentage points lower than the same period of last year. At the same period, China scored a overall foreign trade growth at 35 percent, the minister said.

Moreover, the Chinese government adopted a number of measures to ensure the steady flow of China's textile exports to EU and US.

As a result, the growth rate and proportion of textile exports to the general Sino-EU trade and Sino-US trade showed downward turn every month in the first four months, he said. Bo said as a responsible nation in the international trade, even though China has many difficulties and should enjoy its due interests, the Chinese government made a number of major decisions,including voluntarily restriction on textile export, lowering export growth, increasing tariff upon textile exports. All these measures ensured the stable conditions in the EU and US markets, he said.

He said the Chinese government valued its relations with EU and U.S and has always hoped to develop friendly cooperation with EU and U.S.

To that end, China adopted certain special and voluntarily measures beyond its WTO commitments, he said. "Anyone with fair attitude can see it," he said.

China is ready to properly handle the textile trade issue with EU and US through serious consultations, he said.

Source: Xinhua