SHANGHAI, Dec. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- China has been facing increasing risks in international trade and its ratio of bad accounts in exports is 10 times or more of that in developed countries.

    Xu Fuxing, deputy general manager of China Export and Credit Insurance Corporation (SINOSURE), believed the risks built up as a result of a lack of experience in doing international trade and construction of relevant supporting networks.

    In comparison with developed nations, China, whose international trade started only after the country's reform and opening-up drive, adopted in late 1970s, is "pretty much backward"in terms of experience, construction of financial and credit supporting networks, basic research on risk control and relevant technological developments, said Xu while addressing an ongoing international credit and risk management conference held in Shanghai.

    "Risks are especially great to those Chinese companies which have started to do international trade since 2001 when China was admitted into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the country began to lift the long-standing restrictions in rights to do foreign trade step by step," said Xu.

    Xu also blamed the export of commodities with low-technology contents and an irrational export structure for the country's growing risks in international trade.

    "China easily falls prey to frequent disputes in international trade as a result of highly concentrated export-oriented industries," Xu noted.

    Statistics show that China has been targeted in over 700 cases of investigation for anti-dumping, anti-subsidy, guarantee measures or measures of special protection since joining the WTO, becoming one of the nations with the most number of such cases.

    In the meantime, a sample survey indicates that China's ratio of bad accounts in exports is five percent, which is ten to 20 times the average for the developed countries.

    Take the year of 2004 as an example. China exported 593.36 billion US dollars worth of commodities last year, but its overseas bad accounts cropping up in exports also ran as high as 30 billion US dollars.

    A separate survey of over 1,000 foreign trade companies suggests that 68 percent of the companies surveyed suffered economic setbacks because of a loss of credit on their trading partners' part, and over half of them experienced "postponed payment of receivables."

    SINOSURE, founded in December 2001 with the purpose of helping Chinese exporters avoid political and commercial risks in international trade, on Thursday published a report analyzing 60 major trading nations in aspects such as political economy and social development status, market opportunities and risks.

    SINOSURE has so far underwritten commodities totaling 42 billion US dollars. Export companies have obtained more than 10 billion US dollars of trade financing from banks with export credit insurance provided by SINOSURE.

    And the average ratio of bad accounts in exports is lower than one percent for the export companies insured with SINOSURE, nearing the level of developed countries.

    Xu pledged that SINOSURE had planned to raise the rate of contribution to general trade from about six percent at present tosome 10 percent in 2007 by boosting SINOSURE's business size to 40 billion US dollars annually. Enditem