Furniture makers protest `dumping'

Angry at what they call a "deluge of shoddy, counterfeit and low-priced" Chinese furniture into Taiwan, furniture makers in the Kaohsiung area say they will launch a series of protests and form their own "trust" against what they claim to be dumping by China.

Wang Kun-hsiang (王焜祥), chairman of the Kaohsiung Furniture Industrial Association (高雄市家具公會), said Chinese furniture and home accessories have been flooding into the country and have grabbed a more than 50 percent share of the market.

Wang said he and others were denouncing the "made in China" furniture and home accessories because they were sold at lower-than-normal prices and were mostly "copycat" products.

The association would organize all of its member companies into an alliance to promote sales of domestically-produced "high-quality" furniture, he said.

This marks the second time in less than a month that a Taiwanese industry has accused China of dumping. Towel makers, mostly from the central county of Yunlin, took to the streets last month to denounce a deluge of cheap Chinese products.

The International Trade Commission said last month that local towel makers had been harmed by the flood of cheap Chinese products entering the local market.

Local manufacturers have demanded that the government increase its customs duty on Chinese toweling imports.