CHINA is highly concerned about the European Union’s “trade protectionism tendencies” as the EU launched a new anti-dumping charge against Chinese corrosion resistant steel, the Commerce Ministry said in a statement Friday.

    The European Union launched an investigation Friday into whether Chinese producers of certain corrosion resistant steels are selling into Europe at unfairly low prices, in its latest action against cheap Chinese steel imports.

    China noted that the EU decision came only days before a non-market economy clause in its WTO deal is set to expire Dec. 11, the ministry said in the statement.

    The ministry urged the EU to “timely and thoroughly” abide by its obligations when the clause expires. It said it was willing to appropriately resolve trade frictions with the EU through negotiations.

    The European Commission also said it would start another anti-dumping investigation into certain cast iron products from China and India as well as determining whether existing duties on Chinese steel seamless pipes and tubes should continue for another five years.

    The EU has already imposed duties on a wide range of steel grades to counter what EU steel producers say is a flood of steel sold at a loss due to Chinese overcapacity and partly the cause of 5,000 British job losses.

    A China Commerce Ministry official said China attached a “high degree of attention and concern” to the case and that Europe’s steel problems were due to its own weak economic growth.

    Wang Hejun, the head of the trade remedies investigation department, said in a statement on the ministry’s website that Europe should rationally analyze its steel industry’s problems.

    The EU investigation begins just days before the 15th anniversary of China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, when the country says new trade defense rules are supposed to kick in.

    Until now, the EU has been able to compare Chinese prices with those of another country — in the current case Canadian prices. But, China insists this should no longer be possible from Dec. 11. If the United States, European Union, and other WTO members begin to take Chinese prices as fair market value, it will be much harder for them to challenge China’s cheap exports.

    The European Commission proposed last month a new way of treating China, but its proposals still await approval from the EU’s 28 members and the European Parliament. Aegis Europe, a group of European industry federations including Eurofer, said there was no legal requirement to change the way the EU treated China on Dec. 11 and that EU’s partners the United States and Japan would not be doing so.(SD-Agencies)