By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-01-10 06:39:58 | Updated at 2025-01-10 11:41:57
5 hours ago
Even as its massive export machine kept churning out goods in 2024, China slammed into a record number of trade barriers erected last year as more developing countries joined the chorus of naysayers voicing concerns over China’s overcapacity conundrum.
Its trading partners announced a total of 160 trade investigations into made-in-China products – a sharp increase from 69 cases in 2023, according to the Post’s calculations based on data from China Trade Remedies Information, a platform under the Ministry of Commerce.
Cases involving both anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations by the same country against the same products were categorised as a single case.
If including cases in which China was one of the countries being investigated, the number further rose to 169, from 79 a year earlier.
Twenty-eight trading partners launched investigations into Chinese imports last year, up from 18 in 2023. Notably, the list included more developing countries, such as Thailand, Peru and Pakistan.
Liang Yan, an economist at Willamette University in Oregon, said that many of these investigations were pre-emptive measures by developing countries to prevent a surge in Chinese imports, driven by concerns that China might redirect exports from the United States to their markets.
