China limits on U.S. goods probed

The World Trade Organization launched an investigation Tuesday into Chinese restrictions on the sale of American movies, music and books -- Washington’s fourth commercial complaint against Beijing in little more than a year.

The United States says “less favorable distribution opportunities” in China for foreign-made CDs, DVDs and computer software have cost U.S. media companies millions of dollars.

Various other items also were addressed at a busy meeting of the WTO’s dispute body, which was delayed more than a week because of Taiwan’s refusal to allow a Chinese judge on the organization’s powerful appeals body. The island dropped its demand Tuesday.

Washington expanded the scope of its complaint in July to include censorship rules that it says unfairly target Hollywood films and foreign suppliers of music recordings in China, such as those sold by Apple Inc.’s iTunes store.

For some U.S. audiovisual products, distribution is limited to Chinese state-owned firms. For others, companies face complicated requirements that do not extend to Chinese competitors, the U.S. says.

Beijing said it was disappointed with the U.S. complaint, which it said was made “despite the ample market access that China grants to foreign publications, films and audiovisual products and services.”

The new case is the latest WTO move against China by the Bush administration, which has faced pressure from Congress over America’s soaring trade deficits and lost manufacturing jobs.

The overall deficit reached a record for the fifth consecutive year in 2006 at $765.3 billion. The U.S. imbalance with China grew to $232.5 billion, the highest ever with a single country.

The Geneva-based trade body is expected to make three rulings next year: on claims by the U.S. and the 27-nation European Union that China maintains an illegal tax system to block imports of foreign-made auto parts, on a U.S. and Mexican complaint over Chinese industrial subsidies and on claims by Washington that Beijing is in effect providing a haven for product piracy and counterfeiting through excessively high thresholds for criminal prosecution.