China has appealed at the World Trade Organisation against a ruling that its tariffs on car part imports were "inconsistent" with established rules, a WTO spokeswomman said on Monday.
"China has appealed," a WTO spokeswoman said just hours before the organisation's Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) was due to meet to formally adopt the ruling on its car imports.
Beijing had already signalled its intention to appeal in July, saying that it "does not completely agree with the content and conclusion of the dispute settlement panel's report.
"According to the dispute resolution procedures of the WTO, the Chinese side reserves the right to appeal."
"The affair is now in the hands of the DSB," the spokeswoman said, adding that the body will have between 60 and 90 days to come up with a new report.
The DSB ruled in July that China's policies were inconsistent with WTO rules, a decision that was welcomed by the United States which brought the complaint along with Canada and the European Union.
EU trade commission spokesman Peter Power said Monday that while China had the right to appeal, he was confident the original verdict would stick.
"China is perfectly within its rights to seek an appeal. However we remain entirely confident of the strength of our case as already adjudicated by the WTO," he told AFP.
US Trade Representative Susan Schwab had said at the time of the initial ruling that the case was a clear victory against China.
"The panel report leaves no doubt that China's discriminatory treatment of US auto parts has no place in the WTO system," she said.
Beijing has a minimum local content requirement of 60 percent for home produced cars. A vehicle that fails that criterion suffers the same tariff as if it had been imported completely built.
China imposes an import duty of 25 percent on whole vehicles and only 10 percent on auto parts.
China has said the rules aim to prevent tax evasion by companies that import whole cars as spare parts to avoid higher tariff rates.
But the US argued that the measure violated China's WTO accession agreement, which pledged a progressive opening up of Chinese markets.
The measure puts pressure on foreign auto parts producers to re-locate their manufacturing facilities to China and discourages car makers in China from using foreign auto parts in the assembly of vehicles, Washington argued.
