Shanghai Show: Rising Worries on Dumping Duties for e-Bikes

SHANGHAI, China – The 19th China Int’l Bicycle & Motor Fair which opened its doors last Monday indicates hat there are rising worries in China on the European Union installing a dumping duty on e-Bikes made in China and imported into the EU. What trickered these worries and rumours on such a new

dumping duty has all to do with the fact that the Chinese big e-Bike industry is focusing more on export as its domestic sales are on such a high level that further growth is unlikely for the coming years also due to the economic crisis.

At a conference on electric bikes organized by the China Bicycle Association (CBA) which took place on the second day of the Shanghai Show, figures on the current e-Bike production and sales were presented. In the world biggest e-Bike market, China, the business is levelling off and stood last year (as in 2007) at a total of about 21 million electric bicycles. Here it was said that the market is expected to remain stable in the next years.

The director of the CBA Information Center, Yu Shiguang, further stipulated that: “The overseas markets offer a big potential for the Chinese e-Bike industry. In the next years growth of 10% per year is expected mainly because of growing exports.”

China’s 2008 export to various countries stood at 580,000 complete e-Bikes. The CBA figures do not include the very large numbers of completely and semi knocked down (CDK and SKD) electric bikes that were exported to India and the EU. With them included the export number could be much higher.

Contrary to regular bicycles, e-Bikes made in China and exported to the European Union are not subject to a dumping duty. As electric bikes are considered as ‘cycles with an auxiliary engine’ they have a different custom code compared to regular bicycles. That is why this product is considered to be different and is not subject to anti-dumping duties.

Only regular import duties have to be paid when electric bikes from China are imported into Europe. However, these are also less compared to the 14% on regular bikes. The import duty on Chinese made electric bikes is 6%.

On the question whether the rising worries on the instigation of a dumping duty on Chinese e-Bikes are justified; as far as this trade publication knows there’s currently no investigation taking place on the dumping of Chinese made e-Bikes in Europe.