09May

China to respond to WTO over trade measures

Posted on 9th May, 2018

China’s trade authorities have said they will respond ‘as soon as possible’ to global concerns over restrictions on the import of waste products to the country.

WTOIn April 2018, a meeting of the Committee on Import Licensing of the World Trade Organization, heard concerns from a number of states over measures affecting waste products imposed by China with the Chinese government representatives at the meeting promising to respond soon.

The restrictions include those on the imports of certain types of plastics and recovered paper for recycling and also ferrous and non-ferrous metal items.
The latest discussion over the global concerns come as markets for most of the materials covered start to improve in the UK.

Whether the concerns raised at the World Trade Organization will lead to any softening in approach by China remains unclear as President Xi Jinping has brought in the measures to help improve China’s environment as well as boost the country’s use of internal resources.

Meanwhile, observers say that so far overall the implementation of the quality requirements seems to have gone smoothly and a learning process is in operation on both sides. However, one observer said it will be interesting to see how China responds if some of its reprocessors run short of raw material in the face of rising pulp prices and a shortage of acceptable material.