China views an EU dumping investigation into Chinese safety shoes as the first of many but hopes to reach an agreement, officials said today.
European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said yesterday he would open an investigation into whether Chinese exports of reinforced shoes were being sold in Europe at prices below production cost.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said: "On the question of footwear, we hope we can reach an understanding or an agreement just like we did on the textile issue."
Su Chaoying, general secretary of the China Leather Association, told reporters exports of such shoes made up only a small part of the country's overall footwear shipments.
"But we regard it as a signal that the EU will carry out anti-dumping investigations against other kind of shoes in a few months," Mr Su said.
The EU's executive arm said last week that imports of six categories of Chinese footwear in the first four months of 2005 had jumped 681 per cent from a year earlier, with shipments of some shoes soaring more than 1,000 per cent.
Mr Su disputed those figures, saying China's shoe exports to the EU in the first three months were only 30 per cent higher in value and 2.8 per cent higher in quantity than a year earlier.
Last week, Mr Mandelson reached an 11th-hour agreement with China to limit increases in 10 kinds of Chinese textile exports to between 8.5 and 12 per cent a year until 2007.