Japan's Practice, a Kind of 'Trade Protectionism': Official

Home>>Business

Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, August 16, 2002

Japan's Practice, a Kind of 'Trade Protectionism': Official

DISCUSSION

CHINESE

SEND TO FRIEND

Senior Chinese officials Thursday described Japan's quarantine and inspection of Chinese vegetable exports as "trade protectionism." They also criticized as "one-sided," "unfair" and "exaggerated" some reports in the Japanese media on the safety and quality of Chinese vegetables but did not name any media outlets.

This year Japan has spent much time and effort examining Chinese farm products and announced that Chinese frozen spinach has a pesticide residue above acceptable level. This has been overstated by some irresponsible members of the Japanese media.

Guo Li, assistant minister of foreign trade and economic co-operation, said that, by labelling Chinese vegetables as "poisonous," the reports misled Japanese consumers and have severely damaged the image of Chinese products.

She said China strongly opposes "unfair and discriminatory" inspections of its exports and hopes Japan will immediately stop its "unfair" trade measures to avoid a repetition of last year's trade disputes over farm produce between the two countries.

Cao Xumin - chairman of the China Chamber of Commerce for the Import and Export of Foodstuffs, Native Produce and Animal By-products - said Japan's stricter quarantine and inspection measures aim to stop vegetable imports from China and shield backward local industries under the guise of protecting consumers' interests.

He said Chinese vegetables are generally safe and of a high quality. Japan inspected Chinese vegetables 7,001 times in the first seven months of this year and found that only 0.5 per cent had a pesticide residue higher than Japanese standards.

"The Chinese Government is dedicated to food-safety supervision and inspection and has laid down proper laws and rules and founded sound technical standards and systems for inspections to ensure the safety of its food, especially food exports," he said.

The chairman said Japan's stricter inspection measures discriminate against China because they started with spinach and 99 per cent of Japan's spinach imports come from China. Japan imports between 40,000 and 50,000 tons of spinach each year, according to official Japanese statistics.

Cao said the stricter rules limit Japan's vegetable imports from China by slowing their passage through customs, raising inspection costs and reducing vegetable freshness due to the longer inspection time.

The inspection cost for Chinese vegetables has increased to 800,000 yen (US$6,830) per batch from 50,000 yen (US$427) per batch due to the increased samplings required.

Japan last year spent US$1.18 billion on vegetables imported from China.

Even the Chinese spinach, the focus of Japanese media, is safe, he said. According to Japan's regulations, the residue of chlorpyrifos, a low-level poisonous pesticide, should not exceed 0.01 ppm when spinach is concerned.

However, Japan's chlorpyrifos standard when dealing with self-produced radish is as high as 3 ppm, 300 times more than for spinach, the expert explained.

Other Japanese staple vegetables also enjoy much more lenient chlorpyrifos restrictions, such as 2 ppm for cole, 1 ppm for cabbage and 0.5 ppm for tomato, he said.

Even in accordance with such unreasonable Japanese standard, only 41 out of 467 batches of Chinese spinach exported to Japan since late March were said to have excessive pesticide levels, said Cao.

If Chinese spinach is said to be "poisonous vegetable," then the Japanese cole, cabbage and tomato should be called "deadly poisonous vegetables," the Chinese expert said.

The conduct of Japanese government and relevant departments and the reports of Japanese media were not aimed at protecting Japanese consumers, but were actually a kind of trade protectionism in the name of food security, Cao said.

In the first half of this year, China's exports of fresh vegetables to Japan dropped 19.42 per cent year-on-year to US$81.41 million, those of frozen vegetables dropped 22.47 per cent to US$9.12 million and those of salted vegetables fell 8.09 per cent to US$43.56 million.

Cao attributed the sharp falls to the Japanese Government's technical trade barriers, which he said have harmed Japanese consumers, importers and food processors as well as Chinese farmers and exporters.

Bao Junkai, director of the food import and export bureau of the State General Administration of Quality Supervision and Inspection and Quarantine, also criticized Japan for adopting "unnecessarily strict and irrational" inspection standards for certain vegetables.

He said a recent survey of the administration in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province showed that Chinese vegetables are safe and of a high quality under Chinese standards, United States standards, European standards and Japanese standards.

Questions?Comments? Click here

China, Japan to Talk on Vegetable Trade Snag

Japan to Legislate Ban on Vegetables from China

Japanese Official: Vegetable Imports from China Healthy

China's High-tech Development Geared to Marketable Industries ( 46 Messages)

Chinese GRE Test Takers Shocked by US ETS Decision ( 24 Messages)

Bush Looks Forward to Chinese President Jiang's Visit: Spokesman ( 22 Messages)

US Should Change Two-sided Policy: Opinion ( 27 Messages)

Shanghai Financial Center Aiming High ( 10 Messages)