China in growing need of WTO-related legal service

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, December 08, 2003

China in growing need of WTO-related legal service

Chinese people have become more and more familiar with the words "anti-dumping" and "safeguard" thanks to increasing trade disputes from steel to lighters in recent years.

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Chinese people have become more and more familiar with the words "anti-dumping" and "safeguard" thanks to increasing trade disputes from steel to lighters in recent years.

"China will see more and more lawsuits relevant to WTO rules," said Wang Xuehua, lawyer and partner of the Beijing Huanzhong & Partners, here Sunday.

Wang's law firm has represented Chinese companies in handing in16 anti-dumping charges to the administrations by July this year.

"The legal service relevant to the WTO will be in great need and promising," he said.

Two years after it became a member of the WTO, China has just finished its first trial to settle a trade dispute under the WTO dispute settlement body.

The Chinese government handed in the request to the WTO Appellate Body to start negotiations with the United States soon after the US government decided to impose safeguard measures on steel in March last year.

Some eight months later China imposed safeguard tariffs on five kinds of imported steel products, which will last for three years, as an action against the US decision.

"This case was typical, and not only the government but also lawyers learned a lot from it," Wang said.

Wang was one of the attorneys for the Chinese steel companies to request the government to start an investigation into imposing safeguard measures on steel, and he also participated in China's talks with the United States about the US safeguard measures on steel.

The US government announced on Dec. 4 that it would remove the safeguard tariff on steel.

Besides such cases relevant to safeguard measures and anti-dumping, WTO-related legal service will be needed in many other businesses like quarantine, customs and intellectual property, Wang said.

Chinese companies also need consultation and assistance from domestic lawyers when they are charged with dumping abroad though they usually hire local law firms to go to court, he added.

"But there are still a few Chinese lawyers with good enough knowledge about WTO rules to well handle such cases," he said.

The impact of the WTO entry on the country won't wholly be seen until the interim ends, said Huang Wenjun, lawyer and secretary general of the WTO committee under the All China Lawyers Association (ACLA), at the committee's annual meeting held in Guangzhou on Sunday.

The committee aims to educate more Chinese lawyers about WTO rules and expects to see more of them engage in legal service in this field, Huang said.

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