United States Trade Representative......>

CHINA PRESS: United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Monday

that China represented an "unprecedented" threat to the world trade system, with

World Trade Organization rules inadequate to deal with the issue, the South

China Morning Post reported on Tuesday. "The sheer scale of their coordinated

effort to develop their economy, to subsidize, to create national champions, to

force technology transfers and to distort markets in China and throughout the

world is a threat to the world trading system that is unprecedented," the SCMP

quoted Lighthizer as saying at a speech in Washington. Lighthizer said that he

did not want to prejudge the USTR office's Section 301 investigation into

China's trade practices, but added that he was getting "an awful lot of

complaints" from U.S. companies that had to "hand over technology" to

joint-venture partners in China, the report said. Lighthizer's comments came

after China's Ministry of Commerce said Monday that it was starting a four-month

campaign to crack down on Chinese entities that violated foreign companies'

intellectual property rights -- one of the main issues of contention in the

U.S.-China trade dispute.