China's textile industry victim of trade frictions

China faced the world's largest number of anti-dumping investigations for the 16th consecutive year in 2010, and the country's textile industry has been one of the biggest victims of trade frictions, a commerce official said Thursday.

China has been embroiled in 313 trade remedy investigations from 2008 to the first-half of this year, of which 35 cases involving 1.9 billion U.S. dollars were targeted at the country's textile companies, said Li Zengli, an official with the Bureau of Fair Trade for Imports and Exports of the Ministry of Commerce.

China is one of the world's largest textile exporters, accounting for one third of the global textile trade volume.

Gao Yong, vice president of the China National Textile and Apparel Council, said the country's textile industry has been the second most negatively affected by trade frictions, just after the chemical engineering sector, since China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.

China's textile exports increased at a fast pace during the past 10 years with 25 percent average annual growth, Gao said.

He believes trade investigations launched by China's top three export destinations, the United States, Europe and Japan, will decrease over the next five years, while those launched by emerging economies, such as India, Brazil and Peru, are likely to rise.

Gao said he expects the country to see a decline in anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations, and a rise in the trade frictions that are caused by technical barriers.

He suggested that domestic textile companies enhance their competitiveness by improving techniques and creating their own brands.