Brussels imposes unfair trade barriers, says Beijing

BEIJING

TOPSHOT - A woman works at a texile factory in Siyang County of Suqian municipality in east China's Jiangsu province on Dec. 24, 2024.

China said on Thursday that its investigation into EU practices found that Brussels imposed unfair "trade and investment barriers" on Beijing, adding to long-running commercial tensions.

Beijing announced the probe in July, after the bloc launched investigations into whether Chinese government subsidies were undermining European competition.

Beijing has consistently denied that its industrial policies are unfair and has threatened to take action against the EU to protect Chinese companies' legal rights and interests.

Its Commerce Ministry said on Thursday that the EU's implementation of its Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) had discriminated against Chinese firms and "constitutes trade and investment barriers".

The ministry said that "selective enforcement" of FSR measures resulted in "Chinese products being treated more unfavourably during the process of export to the EU than products from third countries".

It added that the FSR had "vague" criteria for investigating foreign subsidies, placed a "severe burden" on the targeted companies and had opaque procedures that created "huge uncertainty".

EU measures like surprise inspections "clearly exceeded the necessary limits", while investigators were "subjective and arbitrary" on issues like market distortion, according to the ministry.

Companies deemed not to have complied with investigations also faced "severe penalties", which placed "huge pressure" on Chinese firms, it said.

The ministry said FSR investigations had forced Chinese companies to abandon or curtail projects, causing losses of over 15 billion yuan ($2.05 billion).