The act distorts international trade of farm products and could negatively impact on the new round of World Trade Organization (WTO) agricultural talks, said China's 2003 report on 18 nations' trade and investment environment issued Tuesday by the Ministry of Commerce. This is the first report of its kind and the ministry plans them annually.

The report is intended to help identify foreign countries' trade barriers against Chinese companies and form the foundation for bilateral or multilateral government negotiations to eliminate them.

The report exposed major trading partners' abuse of trade remedies, technical standards, quarantine and quality inspections, intellectual property rights, customs procedural requirements, environmental protection and labor standards as trade barriers against Chinese exports.

Although the WTO works hard to reduce tariff and non-tariff trade barriers and promote trade liberalization, trade protectionism continues to take place, increasing the number of global trade barriers, said a ministry official who declined to be named.

He said some WTO members are relying increasingly on these non-tariff trade barriers to restrain China's export growth because they are less obvious, and no multilateral trading rules are currently available to regulate them.

The official urged domestic companies to enhance their awareness of foreign countries' trade barriers and notify intermediary organizations or the ministry after identifying them.

They could also apply to the ministry for trade barrier investigations and governmental negotiations, he said.

The 2003 report dealt with trade and investment environment of 18 countries, which made up for 70 per cent of China's total foreign trade last year.

These include the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Russia, the European Union, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Australia and South Africa.

Except China, five other WTO members including the United States, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and Canada have also started writing such reports. Such reports are meant to aid their domestic firms to get to know more about the international market, said ministry officials.

(China Daily May 21, 2003)