(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-08-02 11:02

The Ministry of Commerce (MOC) on Wednesday described a combined anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation by the United States into Chinese off-road tyres as wrong.

The US Department of Commerce decided Tuesday that it would launch anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probes simultaneously into China-made off-road tyres.

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It was the fifth such probe the US had launched against Chinese imports in less than a year, said MOC spokesman Wang Xinpei, adding the frequent dual investigations were an abuse of World Trade Organization rules.

The US launched the dual investigations into China-made coated free sheet paper in March, and carbon steel tubes in June, and into light-walled rectangular pipes and tubes and laminated woven sacks in July.

Wang said the probes were unfair to Chinese industry and unhelpful to the development of a mutually beneficial Sino-US trade relationship. He added it was an "unwise, wrong move".

China hoped the US would make tangible efforts to tackle the problem and avoid making Sino-US trade issues more complicated, said Wang.

As the US did not treat China as a market economy, the use of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures infringed US rules and its tradition of not adopting anti-subsidy measures against non-market economies, which had been practiced for more than two decades, Wang said on July 20.