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Restrictive Acts Harmful to Trade
The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation (MOFTEC) said on Friday night that it strongly opposes any restrictive measures to be imposed by the Japanese Government on towel imports from China.
"Any restrictive measures on Chinese textile imports would destroy the overall balance of Sino-Japanese trade," said MOFTEC spokesman Gao Yan.
China and Japan are important to each other as trade partners.
Sino-Japanese trade increased 25.7 per cent year-on-year to US$83.2 billion last year, according to Chinese customs statistics.
Textiles and garments are China's major exports to Japan and play an important role in balancing Sino-Japanese trade, said Gao.
China had a trade surplus of US$143 million with Japan last year, customs statistics indicate. Economists said the surplus is negligible in comparison to the size of Sino-Japanese trade and should be tolerable for Japan, who has an even larger surplus with the United States.
The MOFTEC spokesman said increases in China's textile exports to Japan are reasonable and result from the fact that the two economies are highly complementary.
"Increases in China's towel exports to Japan have not been so large as to damage Japanese industries," said Gao.
She also warned that restrictive measures on Chinese textile imports would also harm the interests of Japanese investors in China.
Economists said a lot of Japanese investors set up plants in China to sell their products to Japan.
Under the request of Japanese towel makers, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry declared on Friday that it would commence investigations aimed at imposing restrictive measures on Chinese towel imports.
Gao said China would closely watch Japan's investigation.
Source: China Daily
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