China's chief trade representative Gao Hucheng looks through a document as he attends the ninth WTO Ministerial Conference opening ceremony in Nusa Dua, in Bali on Tuesday. (Reuters)
China launched a trade dispute against the United States on Tuesday to challenge Washington's accusations that China has dumped cheap exports on the US market, the World Trade Organization said in a statement.
The dispute, the first WTO complaint launched by China this year, was filed on the first day of the trade body's biennial ministerial conference, which is being held in Bali.
It is the eighth trade complaint that China has filed over US trade remedies, the WTO said. Its case argues that Washington assesses "dumping" - selling exports at unfairly cheap prices - in a way that breaks WTO rules.
The WTO did not say which products were affected by the case, but China's Xinhua news agency cited Shen Danyang, spokesman for China's Ministry of Commerce, as saying there were 13 anti-dumping measures in question, covering products such as oil well pipelines and total exports of $8.4 billion.
The United States has 60 days to try to settle the complaint. After that China could ask the WTO to adjudicate.
The United States has repeatedly lost WTO cases over its use of a particular calculation for assessing suspected dumping cases.
The United States has said that its calculation method, known as "zeroing", is superior to the WTO's approved methodology, but it has nevertheless promised not to use it in future, after losing numerous legal rulings over the issue.
© Thomson Reuters 2013