New Delhi : India on Monday rejected China’s demand to grant it market economy status, amid the ongoing face-off between the two armies along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). New Delhi will continue to treat its neighbour as a non-market economy, which allows it to impose steep anti-dumping duties on imports from China.
World Trade Organization (WTO) members are allowed to apply anti-dumping measures on any company if it exports a product at a lower price than its home market, and if the product threatens to impact the local industry.
China joined the WTO in December 2001 after years of negotiations on the condition that it will be treated as a non-market economy by other member countries for anti-dumping proceedings. A non-market economy refers to a country which has a complete or substantially complete monopoly of its trade and where all domestic prices are fixed by the state. While the 15-year period ended in December 2016, the European Union and the US have desisted from granting market economy status to China, citing wide-ranging price control on export commodities by China.