According to China Business News, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) revealed lately that to date, China has no record of taking the initiative to prosecute any of its WTO trade partners.

 

Zhang Xiangchen, Director of MOFCOM Department for WTO Affairs, indicated that since it entered the WTO five years ago, China has seen only one record of being prosecuted. It has never taken the initiative to prosecute its WTO trade partners.

 

The US and the EU are currently the most active and most frequent users of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. The US has initiated 76 prosecutions through the mechanism, and the EU initiated 72. At the same time, the two parties also received the most prosecutions, namely 86 and 63, respectively.

 

Among the 76 lawsuits initiated by the US, 53 have been closed, and the US won 25 cases, reconciled 24 and lost 4 in terms of core issues. As to the cases in which the US was prosecuted, it won 13, reconciled 15 and lost 27 in terms of core issues.

 

(Chinanews.cn March 9, 2006)