By Ru Ding,
As an increasing number Chinese
state-owned or invested enterprises make their way up the Global Fortune 500 and expand their shares in the
international market, other countries are seeking ways to counter-balance this
fast expansion that is destructive to their own industries. One of the ways on
the legal side is through trade remedy measures, especially countervailing
duties against the imported products that contain the inputs from state-owned
enterprises (SOEs). These SOEs and their subsidiaries are called “public
entities” or “public bodies” by domestic investigating authorities under national law or international trade
law, and are presumably regarded as inherent providers or conveyers of
subsidies. Whether this way of condemning SOEs is consistent with the World
Trade Organization (WTO) legal regime is generally called the “public body”
issue.
