China's WTO accession in the year 2001 is an event of great
significance in the world trade history. Most members of the World
Trade Organization are market economy countries; therefore, its
operations are based on the rules of the market economy. China has,
however, been treated unfairly in international trade in that it is
regarded as a non-market economy country (NMC) in anti-dumping
cases against China.
As a matter of fact, China has already established a market economy
system after over 20 years of reforms and opening-up.
To prove China's market economy status, the Economic and Resources
Management Research Institute under Beijing Normal University,
entrusted by the Ministry
of Commerce, released a report entitled Report on the
Development of China's Market Economy 2003 on April 13. It
studied the latest situation of China's market economy as of the
end of 2001.
According to the report, China is about 69 percent a market
economy measured by the internationally accepted standard,
exceeding 60 percent as the threshold of a market economy
country.
"The non-market economy status has caused lots of anti-dumping
investigations against Chinese products," said Li Xiaoxi, director
of the institute.
As for the objectivity of the report, Li explained that his team
chose five major criteria: government behavior, freedom of economic
restriction, access to production, fair trade and financial
parameters, having consulted related anti-dumping laws in the
United States, European Union (EU) and Canada. Based on these
criteria, they further designed 11 sub-parameters and 33 economic
indicators, making the report more acceptable and comparative to
world conditions.
He added that the majority of their statistics were from the
National Bureau of Statistics and other authoritative departments.
Forty percent of the total economic indicators, about 13, were
adopted from the Heritage Foundation of the United States and
Fraser Institute of Canada. The research team adopted the ranking
standard of the Heritage Foundation, dividing market freedom into
five grades where one point stands for the highest level. The
report listed the ranking of 33 segmented markets and achieved the
ultimate result of 2.51 points, using weighted averages to about 69
percent.
(China.org.cn November 7, 2003)
