Duties to remain on cellulose pulp

The Ministry of Commerce announced on Friday that it will continue to impose anti-dumping duties on cellulose pulp imported from the United States, Canada and Brazil.

The decision was made after a review of anti-dumping measures following a World Trade Organization dispute ruling over such restrictions on cellulose pulp imports from Canada in August last year, the ministry said in a statement.

Cellulose pulp, made from plant fiber, is used as a raw material in the production of viscose and acetate fiber.

Anti-dumping duty rates for US imports range from 16.9 percent to 33.5 percent, those for Canadian imports range from zero to 23.7 percent, while Brazilian companies are subject to rates from 6.8 percent to 11.5 percent, according to the original decision.

The ministry's move followed a US Commerce Department announcement earlier this week that it was starting new investigations to determine if steel wheels from China are being dumped in the US and whether manufacturers in China are receiving subsidies.

Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp was also banned by the US government from purchasing any US technology and products, including chips, for seven years, earlier this week.

Zhou Qiangwu, director of the international economics and finance institute at the Ministry of Finance, said the Trump administration is using bilateral trade disputes to provoke China with the aim of gaining more practical benefits.

What the US fails to see is that these actions will only push China to deploy more resources in developing high-tech industries such as chips, navigation systems, new materials, automobiles and aircraft engines via the Made in China 2025 strategy, said Lyu Xiang, a researcher of US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

"It will also force China to cast off its heavy dependence on service trade with the US and conduct more international collaboration in research and development with other countries including Germany, Russia and South Korea," Lyu said.

China started to impose anti-dumping duties on cellulose pulp imported from the aforementioned countries in April 2014 after a probe found companies from these countries had dumped cellulose pulp on the Chinese market.

After reinvestigating the case, the Ministry of Commerce ruled that during the original probe period such dumping caused substantial damage to the domestic industry and there was a causal relationship between the dumping and the damage.