The European Union has recognized China's remarkable progress on market economy and an MES working group meeting will be held recently to implement the consensus on this issue reached during the 2nd China-EU High-level Economic and Trade Dialogue (HED) on May 7 and 8 in Brussels.

Mr. Chen Deming, China's Commerce Minister disclosed that after the HED and urged the EU to abandon its practice of building its decisions of China's market economy status only on technical standards.

"The EU should recognize from the perspective of political decision-making that the concept of market economy can be materialized in different styles," said Chen, adding that there is no way for China and EU, at different stages of development with different conditions, to adopt the same understanding and macro-economic control over their market economies.

He hopes that western countries could learn the fact of market economies diversifying in stages and types when they deal with the financial crisis by recapitalization their banks and private sector.

"The European Union should not practice double-standards toward China, nor should it impose any discriminative measures against Chinese enterprises on those double-standards," Chen asserted.

Chinese Vice-premier Wang Qishan, who led the Chinese delegation at the HED, also urged the EU to "evaluate the conditions of the Chinese economy in an objective and unprejudiced manner".

As China's largest trading partner since 2004, the EU has not granted China's full market economy status. So far the EU has recognized that China has only met one of the five EU criteria on market economy.

The growing trade remedy actions against Chinese products have been a major concern of the Chinese side. In 2008, all the five anti-dumping measures imposed by the EU were directed at Chinese products. China was also the subject of six out of 10 EU new anti-dumping investigations. From September 2007 to January 2009, the EU has initiated 12 anti-dumping investigations against more than 5 billion USD Chinese products.

As China is not regarded as a market economy, prices of a third country, or so-called substitute country, become EU's benchmark of deciding whether there is dumping and how much dumping is made by Chinese products. China has questioned the fairness of that practice.