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China: Industrial leaders urge removal of textile quotas |
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2004-7-28
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Industry leaders have demanded elimination of textile quotas while urging WTO to ensure the same as per schedule.
They also dispelled the worry that Chinese textiles would flood the world and predicted foreign countries would return to other trade remedies to bar China''s textiles.
Cao Xinyu, deputy director of the China Chamber of Commerce of Import and Export for Textiles, the largest organization in the field with more than 4,000 members, said members of the World Trade Organization should follow rules set a decade ago, and said the quota should be eliminated by January 1, 2005.
"We all have agreed to the rules when entering the world trade body. If any country asks to revise the rule as soon as it finds difficulties in implementation, the world trade order would be a mess, which is not its aim," he said.
About 90 textile trade associations around the world have been campaigning for months to have the WTO consider the negative impact the end of quotas will have on nations around the world and trying to delay their elimination.
They are also lobbying their governments to make a formal request to the WTO for convening an emergency meeting over the impact of the textile liberalization.
The argument offered by the opponents against elimination of quotas is that about 30 million jobs would be lost around the world due to China flooding the world markets with low cost products.
However, Cao said the forecast lacks logic and it is impossible for China to flood the world textiles market.
According to him, China currently focuses on low and middle end products and "If China expands at its current rate, namely expanding by quantity, after the quota elimination, it would create a huge demand for cotton and drive up the cost of cotton imports," Cao said.
Surging cotton prices would push the prices of low and middle end products, which would automatically blunt the Chinese advantage. This is where Pakistan, Viet Nam and Bangladesh would fill in the gap.
But Sun Huaibing, an official from the China Textile Industry Association, says signs indicate that these countries will return to other ways, such as safeguards, to bar the free flow of textiles.
Coming month will see a lot of action on this front as the United States investigates in the Chinese case of socks and EU also having a rethink on the quotas for certain Chinese products. |
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