After Chinese textiles, it is the Chinese shoes, which may face safeguard measures from the European Union on account of surge in imports during the first three months this year.
Chinese Customs figures revealed that over Yuan 730 million worth of shoes to the EU countries, up 30.6 percent over the same period of last year.
This prompted China Association of Leather to comment in media that the EU may impose restrictions on China's shoes imports in early June.
It is feared that akin to the problems faced by the Chinese textiles industry, the on going textile trade disputes may further escalate in the coming months, inviting shoes also under the purview of safeguards, media reports suggest.
Already Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland and France have sought measures to curb Chinese shoes imports on the grounds that they harm their local industries, since ending of quotas in January, 2005.
Shoemakers from east China's Wenzhou, known for its cheap shoe export to the EU, call likely measures “unfair” to impose import curbs on part of the EU, merely on the basis of three months of data.
However, in order to avoid trade barriers they agreed to self regulate exports and acquaint with WTO rules to absorb any negative impact of the same.
-Ltd..jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Thermore (Far East) Ltd.")
.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Limited (TSllC Ltd)")
.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Taiwan Textile Federation (TTF)")
