The company said it and six other concerns filed the petition with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission. The petition also alleged the Chinese government has been providing illegal subsidies to its solar-power manufacturing industry.

Gordon Brinser, president of SolarWorld’s U.S. unit, said the company, which has been making silicon-based solar panels for years, “can compete with anyone in the world.” However, “illegal subsidies in China” have prompted “the Chinese solar industry to come in and gut and own the U.S. solar industry,” Mr. Brinser said, speaking at a press conference here.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said that while U.S. demand for solar power has been “skyrocketing,” the “American solar industry has been collapsing.” He added, “There seems to be one primary explanation for this: that China is cheating.”

The petition filed Wednesday alleges that Chinese solar-product manufacturers are receiving “massive illegal subsidies from the Chinese government…to advance the exports of Chinese manufacturers.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) said Chinese government-backed banks extended $25 billion in loans to large solar-product manufacturers last year, “at fixed, subsidized rates” and with “relaxed restrictions.”

The petition also mentions currency manipulation as another tactic that drives out American solar businesses. From the Washington Post:

The companies complain that China has aided its own solar companies with low-interest loans, cheap land deals and lax environmental standards that lower costs. In addition, they say that China’s currency, which is generally believed to be 10 to 35 percent undervalued, makes Chinese exports cheaper than they should be. Moreover, they allege that many of the Chinese companies are losing money on U.S. sales, a tactic to grab market share and drive U.S. competitors out of business.

Labor costs, which make up less than 10 percent of solar panel production costs, are not a key factor.

“We can compete with any country in the world,” said Santarris. “However it is very difficult for us to compete with the Communist Party of China.”

The Financial Times reports that the coalition’s main push is to put in effect a US tariff on Chinese solar panels.

Timothy Brightbill, a lawyer with Wiley Rein, the law firm representing SolarWorld, said the case would seek anti-dumping tariffs of more than 100 per cent on solar cells and panels from a wide variety of Chinese manufacturers. “China has a system of pervasive and illegal subsidy payments,” he said, including government cash grants and subsidised loans to the industry and subsidised raw material inputs. China had gone from an 8 per cent to 45 per cent share of the US solar market since 2008, Mr Brightbill said.

China has rejected allegations of unfair subsidy and the issue has divided the US solar panel and solar cell industry. Companies that use imported Chinese inputs are resistant to starting a trade war with Beijing. The Solar Energy Industries Association, a business organisation, released a balanced statement on the action on Wednesday, saying that companies had the right to ask for redress against subsidised imports but that free and open trade was important for the sector.

© zhou shuren for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-dumping, China trade surge, currency, imports, renewable energy, solar power, subsidies
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One of the most feared men in the worldwide pearl industry these days is a muscular, Ferrari-driving 40-year-old who is doing the improbable: growing pearls that are nearing the highest quality and may be affordable for middle-class Americans.

The man, Zhan Weijian, runs a large company in the emerging capital of the world’s freshwater pearl farming industry, and it is far from Tahiti and other traditional saltwater pearl havens in the Pacific. Mr. Zhan works here in east-central China, where his white pearls cost a fraction of the saltwater variety.

Wholesale prices for half-inch white pearls have fallen about 30 percent in the last several years, as the influx of high-quality Chinese farmed pearls — grown in former rice fields — has the industry in turmoil.

© compco for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, U.S. China business competition
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On July Fourth, we think about our country and its future. But these days it’s impossible to think about America and its future role in the world without also thinking about China. This was the subject of a combative discussion this week at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

The agent provocateur was Niall Ferguson of Harvard. China and the U.S., he argued, used to have a symbiotic relationship and formed a tightly integrated unit that he calls Chimerica.

In this unit, China did the making, and the United States did the buying. China did the saving, while the U.S. did the spending. Between 1995 and 2005, the U.S. savings rate declined from about 5 percent to zero, while the Chinese savings rate rose from 30 percent to nearly 45 percent.

This savings diversion allowed the Chinese to plow huge amounts of capital into the U.S. and dollar-denominated assets. Cheap Chinese labor kept American inflation low. Chinese efforts to keep the renminbi from appreciating against the dollar kept our currency strong and allowed us to borrow at low interest rates.

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Post tags: China trade surge, U.S. China business competition, US trade deficit
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China’s manufacturing expanded in June, adding to signs the world’s third-largest economy is rebounding from the collapse in global trade, but few new jobs were created, according to two surveys released Wednesday.

Brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets said its purchasing managers index rose to 51.8 from May’s 51.2 on a 100-point scale where numbers above 50 show activity expanding. The state-sanctioned China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said its own PMI edged up slightly to 53.2 from May’s 53.1.

“This PMI indicates the economy is midway through a recovery, despite some slowdown in infrastructure momentum,” Credit Suisse economist Dong Tao said in a report.

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Post tags: China trade surge, manufactures, manufacturing
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Chinese manufacturers of everything from tricycles to truck winches said Wednesday at the opening of Asia’s biggest trade fair that their orders were starting to recover from a steep plunge over the winter but that demand from Europe and particularly the United States remained anemic.

That anecdotal evidence of some uptick in trade came as a senior Chinese government economic forecaster, Fan Jianping, said the economy had grown at an annual pace of “around 6 percent” in the first quarter. That would be the slowest pace since quarterly records began in 1992, indicating that strong consumer spending and heavy government investments had failed to offset a nose dive in exports.

The figure given by Mr. Fan — the official statistic is to be released Thursday — was roughly in line with economists’ expectations. It means that the Chinese economy grew much faster over the winter than any other major world economy, although more slowly than many in China have come to expect and slower than the 6.8 percent pace in the fourth quarter.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, export, manufactures
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Prior to this week’s economic talks with the U.S., the Chinese government unveiled the Outline of National Intellectual Property Rights — a new strategy to tackle the many issues surrounding IPR. This new strategy will improve IPR protection in China and attract greater intellectual resources from abroad.

Moreover, the implementation of this strategy — a milestone in the institution of China’s IPR regime — will boost innovation at home and turn China’s abundant human resources into intellectual resources, with a positive and far-reaching impact on economic and social development in China.

China entered its new historical stage of reform and opening-up in 1978. It wasn’t until then that China began to introduce the concept of intellectual property rights and put in place an IPR regime. Since then, China has promulgated and enforced a host of IPR laws and regulations, including the Trademark Law, the Patent Law, the Copyright Law, the Law Against Unfair Competition, the Rules for Computer Software Protection and the Regulations on the Protection of the Right of Communication Through Information Network.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, trade
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China’s trade surplus soared 22.7% in January as the economy continued to boom despite efforts to cool the rate of growth, official figures have shown.

The surplus – the gap between what China exports and what it imports – grew to $22.7bn (£11.5bn) last month, compared with $15.9bn a year earlier.

China’s exports in January increased 26.7% to $109.7bn, the biggest year-on-year rise in six months.

Imports rose 27.6% to $90.2bn, the biggest increase in almost two years.

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, currency, rising costs
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While beneficial to billions of people, the China trade surge has created unprecedented complexity, additional costs and potential choke points in thousands of international supply chains that touch the country, according to Brian Lutt, president of APL Logistics. Lutt recently warned delegates at the Transpacific Maritime Asia Conference in Shenzhen that these challenges will be magnified as China looks to spread wealth beyond the coast.

“Getting products to market from China quickly, reliably and cost-effectively already keeps logistics providers and their customers up at night,” said Lutt. “But the main production and consumption zones are still clustered in the east of the country. So, the challenges we face today will be multiplied many times once China’s vast hinterland is unlocked.” [Full Text]

[Image: The DP World Hong Kong terminals are busier than ever., by Les Stone by DP World.]

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, supply chain
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