CHINA'S MARKET ECONOMY STATUS PROBLEM: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CZECH STEEL INDUSTRY

In the European Union (EU) serious discussion about granting market economy status (MES) to China for the purposes of trade defence investigations arose in 2016 and the WTO Panel is currently settling this dispute between China and the EU. As the steel sector is very often the target of anti-dumping investigations, firstly, the paper is focused on the analysis of changes in the development of the Chinese, EU and Czech steel production and trade in the period 2001-2016. Secondly, it explores the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) in the steel sector of China and the Czech Republic and compares them. The research methods included the analysis of statistical data about steel production and trade and in order to find out the export competitiveness in the steel sector, the RCA index was used. The analysis confirmed that China had significantly increased its market share in the steel sector even without MES. Although China had recorded fewer steel products with RCA than the Czech Republic, its steel trade was in surpluses and its world market share had increased. China's competitiveness in the steel sector is probably influenced by some non-market factors. Thus, granting MES to China would support the Chinese steel exports to the EU market and have a negative impact on the Czech steel producers. The results of the analysis are discussed and graphically presented.