Twelve countries have launched 33 anti-dumping investigations against China so far this year. Of them, there is a rise of big cases with the amount of money increased by 20 per cent, according to the Ministry of Commerce. China��s overall foreign trade environment has tended to be tense, this was learned from the Ministry of Commerce on October 9.

From the founding of the World Trade Organization in 1995 to the present, foreign countries have filed 707 lawsuits against China��s products, including anti-dumping, anti-subsidy, safeguard measures and special protective measures. At prevent, one in every seven anti-dumping cases worldwide involves Chinese products, making China the country subjected to the most anti-dumping investigations for the past 10 consecutive years. As a result, the lawsuits affect about 40 to 50 billion US dollars worth of Chinese exports annually, according to a People��s Daily report on October 10.

After the integration of global textiles, an alliance in the world, headed by the United States, has gradually formed against Chinese mainland��s textiles this year, due to their worries of the rapid growth of China��s textiles. So far, the United States has imposed import limits on 10 categories of Chinese textiles involving 3.16 billion US dollars, accounting for 42 per cent of China��s integrated products to the United States. The textile products under the present US investigations involve 1.5 billion US dollars, making up 20 per cent of China��s integrated products to the United States. Turkey, South Africa and Columbia have also imposed restrictive measures on China this year.

Another problem worth noting is that since the start of this year, China��s trade surpluses have been all time high in history, which will produce negative effects. In the first eight months of this year, China recorded a trade surplus of 60.22 billion USD in the first eight months of 2005. Judging by the present pace, the active trade balances will come to nearly 100 billion USD by end of this year, surpassing two times the highest records set in 1998. The predicted trade surplus of 100 billion USD will account for 5 per cent of China's total trade volume, compared to 2.8 per cent in 2004. The continuous increase of trade surpluses play a very active role in boosting economic growth and adding foreign exchange reserves in the country.

However, it will also bring some evident negative effects to the country's economy. This will be shown in the following aspects: first, the negative impacts will likely create new trade frictions. In the first eight months of this year, China��s favorable balances in its trade with the United States and the European Union were 50.7 and 124.7 per cent respectively. European and American countries have shown strong responses against China��s rapid trade surplus growth. So the surpluses will trigger more trade disputes. Second, they will add pressure for renminbi revaluation and financial risks, increasing cost and difficulty for the reform of renminbi exchange mechanism.

In addition, the price increase in energy resources and raw materials will bring pressure on the country��s imports and exports. In the first eight months this year, the import prices of crude oil, product oil, steel products, steel ingot, raw plastic materials, synthetic rubber, copper product and synthetic fiber for textiles were up 38.2, 30.3, 49.2, 44.2, 23.3, 31.1, 22.2, and 23.5 per cent respectively. The continued increase of international oil price will form long-term high oil price level globally, bringing disadvantageous factors to China��s economy, including its foreign trade. The decline of foreign investment growth in China will probably influence China��s exports in the last quarter of this year and the coming year.

Due to the betterment of the domestic and foreign economic situation in the country, China will have a faster increase in import and export trade in 2005, which is expected to reach 1,400 billion USD, or nearly 25 per cent growth over the previous year, according to an analysis released by foreign trade department of the Ministry of Commerce.

By People's Daily Online