China has launched an anti-dumping investigation into certain chemicals from the European Union, the United States, Japan and Taiwan, the Ministry of Commerce announced on Sunday.
The chemicals in question are "copolymerized paraformaldehyde," which can "partially replace copper, zinc, tin, lead and other metallic materials" and are used in automotive parts, electrical appliances and industrial machinery.
In foreign trade, dumping means that a product is sold below the manufacturing price, which violates trade rules.
The investigation is to be completed within a year, but could be extended by a further six months "under special circumstances," the ministry said.
When asked in Brussels on Sunday, an EU spokesman said that the European Commission had taken note of this decision by the People's Republic of China and will now carefully examine the content of the investigation before deciding on the next steps.
The European Commission expects this investigation to be fully in line with all relevant World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and obligations, he added.
The Chinese government's measure is seen by experts as a reaction to the recent trade disputes with the West. Last week, US President Joe Biden imposed special tariffs of 100% on electric car imports from China.
The EU is currently investigating the extent to which China is distorting the market for electric cars. A decision on whether the EU will impose punitive tariffs is pending.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and German industry have spoken out against such tariffs.
The chairman of the Trade Committee in the European Parliament, Bernd Lange, expects that the EU will also soon impose tariffs on Chinese electric cars.
"I assume that the investigations into unfair trade practices will lead to countervailing duties on some products," Lange told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) group of German media outlets.
The German Social Democrat politician criticized the US move: "The United States has fundamentally changed its stance on trade issues." US interests take priority, international rules count less and less, he said. Lange sees a major risk for Europe that even more Chinese exports will now enter the European market.
Scholz has warned that markets should not be closed off. "Protectionism only makes everything more expensive in the end," he said recently in Berlin. "What we need is fair and free global trade."
Open markets must not be allowed to "fall by the wayside," he said.
The German industry association BDI had warned that Germany and the EU should now be careful to ensure that the EU internal market does not become a buffer for Chinese overcapacity, which is being thwarted on the US market.