China rejects OECD report on industrial subsidies as ‘one-sided’ amid EU trade tensions
China has rejected a recent OECD report that said its firms receive far higher government subsidies than international peers, calling the findings “one-sided and arbitrary” at a time when EU concerns over Beijing’s industrial policy are intensifying.
“The report’s definition of ‘subsidies’ lacks a unified standard and statistical framework, and deviates from consensus under multilateral frameworks such as the World Trade Organization,” the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Thursday.
“It attributes the rise in Chinese firms’ global market share solely to government subsidies, while overlooking their real competitive advantages in economies of scale, production efficiency and technological upgrading.”
The comments came in response to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report published on Monday, which found Chinese firms had received three to eight times more government subsidies than their global competitors. State support had accounted for nearly 60 per cent of their gains in overseas market share in recent years, the report stated.
Drawing on the OECD’s “Manufacturing Groups and Industrial Corporations” database, it identified solar panels, semiconductors, aluminium, steel and shipbuilding as the top five recipients of subsidies among 15 sectors tracked.
Many of these sectors have been at the centre of trade frictions between China and the European Union, which have soared in recent weeks after the European Commission agreed to adopt a tougher approach to addressing imbalances and Beijing vowed to retaliate.