China and the US sign agreement to protect workers' rights

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – "The U.S. Labor Department is committed to working with its Chinese counterparts to share information and practices that will help ensure that the development of labour standards in China keep pace with China's rapid economic development," said US Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, who, along with Minister Zheng Silin, Chinese Minister of Labor and Social Security and Administrator Wang Xianzheng, State Administration of Work Safety, attended the signing ceremony in which China and the US agreed to four Joint Letters of Understanding designed to improve workers' safety and rights.

The overall agreement includes steps designed to broaden awareness of wage and hour enforcement standards and to step-up cooperation in workplace emergency response procedures and in private insurance in the area of mine safety.

Improving working conditions in China is urgent both in human rights terms but also for the world economy. US companies and trade unions have complained for some time that the exploitation of the workforce in China and the country's monetary policy have made Chinese products unfairly competitive.

Elaine Chao and US Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans are hosts of China's Vice Premier Wu Yi, who will ask the US to help China get the World Trade Organization (WTO) grant it "country with a market economy" status. At present, the WTO does not consider China as a market economy which, while it exempts it from all or most of the trade organisation's rules, it also penalises it in other ways. Not only has it lost several lawsuits for dumping, but since its entry in the WTO (late 1990s), it has discovered that because of its "non-market economy" status its exports are consistently subject to countervailing duties.

Last Friday, the Bush administration proposed slapping higher anti-dumping duties (from 5% to 198%) on wooden bedroom furniture imports from China claiming that Chinese furniture companies have sold furniture in the US below market value.

According to Hu Biliang, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, "granting China the status of a 'country with a market economy' would be one way to curb dumping on the world market, but I don't believe the US will readily accept Beijing's request."

• china
• workers
• human
• rights
• economy