China appeals rare earths ruling
Print Edition
CHINA has appealed to the World Trade Organization over its ruling that the country violated global trade rules by limiting exports of rare earth minerals, the Ministry of Commerce said yesterday.
“China will make the utmost efforts in the appeal process to guard its national interests,” said Shen Danyang, a ministry spokesman.
“Regardless of the appeal’s outcome, China’s policy objectives to protect environment and natural resources will not change, and we will continue to resort to approaches in accordance with the WTO rules to settle the dispute,” he said.
China submitted the appeal yesterday to the WTO dispute settlement body, Shen said.
On March 26, the WTO ruled that China had acted inconsistently with the body’s rules on export measures imposed on the rare earth minerals in a case that was brought by the European Union, Japan and the US in 2012 to the WTO.
The WTO panel report said China’s export duty, export quota and export quota administration and allocation measures imposed on rare earths, tungsten and molybdenum products were inconsistent with the WTO rules and the country’s Accession Protocol.
But the panel also recognized China has taken comprehensive resource and environment conservation measures for the products. It rejected the EU’s claim that China imposed discriminatory export quota requirement on enterprises which applied to trade molybdenum.
Rare earths, a class of 17 mineral elements, are some of the most sought-after metals due to their vital role in green technologies like wind turbines and electric car batteries as well as in military sectors.
China, with its rare earth reserves taking up some 23 percent of the global total, supplies over 90 percent of the world’s market demand at the cost of causing much pollution. Some other countries with rich reserves limit rare earth output for environmental reasons.
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