By Sanjeev Sharma

New Delhi, Feb 17 (IANS): China's government continues to employ a wide array of interventionist industrial policies and supporting measures, which provide substantial government guidance, massive financial resources and favourable regulatory support to Chinese industries across the economy, often in pursuit of specific targets for capacity and production levels and market shares, the USTR said in a report.

In furtherance of its industrial policy objectives, China has also limited market access for imported goods and services and restricted the ability of foreign manufacturers and services suppliers to do business in China. It has also used various, often illicit, means to secure foreign intellectual property and technology to further its industrial policy objectives, as per 2021 USTR Report to Congress on China's WTO Compliance.

The principal beneficiaries of these non-market policies and practices are China's state-owned and state-invested enterprises and numerous nominally private domestic companies that are attempting to move up the economic value chain in industries across the economy.

The benefits that Chinese industries receive largely come at the expense of China's trading partners and their workers and businesses. As a result, markets all over the world are less efficient than they should be, and the playing field is heavily skewed against foreign businesses that seek to compete against Chinese enterprises, whether in China, in the United States or globally.

The industrial policies that flow from China's non-market economic system have systematically distorted critical sectors of the global economy such as steel, aluminium, solar and fisheries, devastating markets in the United States and other countries, the report said.

At the same time, as is their design, China's industrial policies are increasingly responsible for displacing companies in new, emerging sectors of the global economy, as the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party powerfully intervene in these sectors on behalf of Chinese companies. Companies in economies disciplined by the market cannot effectively compete with both Chinese companies and the Chinese state, USTR report said.

it became evident to the US - and to an increasing number of US trading partners - that new strategies were needed to deal with the many problems posed by China's state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade, including solutions independent of the WTO.

The USis now pursuing a multi-faceted strategic approach that accounts for the current realities in the US-China trade relationship and the many challenges that China poses for the US and other trading partners, both now and likely in the future.

it is equally critical for the United States to work more intensely and broadly with allies and like-minded partners in order to build support for solutions to the many significant problems that China's state-led, non-market approach to the economy and trade has created for the global trading system. This work is taking place in bilateral, regional and multilateral fora, including the WTO.