EU to Impose Anti-dumping Duties on Chinese Ceramic Tiles

Anchor: The European Commission announced earlier this week that it would impose up to 73 percent import anti-dumping duties on Chinese ceramic tiles.

Trade experts suspect the tariffs amount to trade protectionism and will have a huge impact on China's ceramic tile industry.

Yingying has the details.

The European Union made the decision based on an anti-dumping probe against imported ceramic tiles from China launched in June 2010. It argued that European tile producers were affected by imports of low-priced Chinese ceramic tiles.

More than 1,400 enterprises were involved in the probe. Eighty percent of them are located in Foshan in southern China's Guangdong Province.

Lan Weibing, Chief of the China Ceramic Industry Association's Foshan Branch, says the average price of Chinese ceramic tiles on the EU market might be five to six percentage points lower than those from Spain and Italy.

Lan contends that up to 73 percent anti-dumping duties are too high.

"The impact will be huge, because according to our statistics in 2009, over 70 million square meters of ceramic tiles were exported to the EU from China. More than three billion U.S. dollars were involved in the trade."

Lan Weibing says the EU accounts for 10 percent of Foshan's ceramic tile overseas market. The new duty will force 15 percent of related enterprises to shut down.

It's reported that the EU is the world's second-biggest ceramic tile producer after China and exports nearly 25 percent of its production.

Li Jiguang, a researcher with the China National Institute of World Trade Organization, says the EU's decision amounts to trade protectionism.

"The anti-dumping duties on Chinese ceramic tiles will increase the import of ceramic tiles within the EU region. In other words, the EU aims to protect the ceramic tile production within its own region."

The researcher says in recent years there has been an upward trend in the number of anti-dumping duties the EU has imposed on Chinese exports. This will have a negative impact on related producers in China. But in the long term, it will spur Chinese enterprises to upgrade their products and increase overseas investment.

Lan Weibing, Chief of China Ceramic Industry Association's Foshan Branch, agrees.

"We should develop new products with core competitiveness and high added value. And we encourage qualified enterprises to set up factories overseas."

The anti-dumping duties went into effect on Thursday and will remain in place for six months.

For CRI, I'm Yingying.