Beijing raps new EU rules on cheap imports

Beijing criticized the European Union on Thursday as being hypocritical and having a double-standard after the bloc introduced rules to guard against excessively cheap imports and singled out China as a distorted staterun economy.

The European Commission, in a 465-page report on Wednesday, said that Beijing exerted a decisive influence over allocation of resources and influenced prices of factors of production in a significant manner, Reuters reported.

“The report made irresponsible remarks about China’s economic development, and adopted discriminative and unfair restrictive measures against China with fabricated excuses without mentioning its own violation of WTO rules,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular news conference.

She urged the EU to strictly abide by WTO rules and avoid abusing trade measures to maintain trade cooperation between China and EU, adding that China “will take necessary measures to protect its legitimate rights”.

Hua also said China’s economy has had historic achievements in recent years, greatly contributing to global economic stability and growth.

“Facts have proved that the success of socialist economy with Chinese characteristics has drawn global attention and has a bright future,” she said.

Also on Thursday, Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng rejected the EU’s practice as misleading enterprises by labeling the Chinese economy as “distorted”.

“Bilateral trade and economic ties between China and the EU are developing with a good momentum at present. We hope it would walk the walk and guide enterprises in a proper way,” he said.

The two-way trade volume between China and EU reached $556.69 billion in the first 11 months of the year, with a year-on-year increase of 12.7 percent.