Abstract: While being frequently encountered with anti-dumping lawsuits in the world, China is also initiating anti-dumping proceedings against its trade partners by actively making use of WTO rules. The anti-dumping proceedings and the number of lawsuits placed on record or being enforced can reflect the complexity of the bilateral relations between China and its trading partners. Through the negative binomial panel test, it can be confirmed that the domestic economic situation and market stability is the primary factor affecting China’s anti-dumping activities, while the anti-dumping proceedings initiated by China is closely related to the number of anti-dumping charges it received. The relevance varies according to the anti-dumping tradition of the trade body: as for anti-dumping “club” members, China has both the intention of retaliation and the concern of being retaliated; as for non-club members, China’s action is mainly based on the considerations of domestic industrial security and market stability. Because the litigation process has a significant “trade investigation effect”, its retaliatory desire is usually stronger than the anti-dumping measures being implemented. On the whole, China is experiencing the adaptation process of “learning from frictions”, and is becoming more mature to master and use international conventions and trade regulation under the WTO framework.

Key words: anti-dumping; trade retaliation; counting panel model; negative binomial regression