A senior Chinese foreign trade official on Monday urged the European Union to recognize China's status as a market economy as early as possible in order to promote economic and trade relations.

The EU should appraise the great achievements made by China in developing its economy and recognize that China has already established a market economy, said Wang Shichun, director of the Fair-Trade Bureau for Imports and Exports with the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.

Wang was addressing an EU-China anti-dumping forum in Brussels.

He said that, with more than two decades of reform and opening-up, China has transformed its planned economy into an open and market-oriented economy.

However, the EU has not yet recognized China's status as a market economy and this is "unfair," said Wang. This has severely hindered the development of bilateral trade, he added.

The EU currently regards China as a country that is transforming itself into a market economy rather than a country that already has a market economy.

The definition that the EU gives to a country's economy affects the value that the EU puts on that country's goods in anti-dumping investigations.

The recognition that China has a market economy will be beneficial to both sides, said Wang.

An EU official told the forum that the EU is willing to hold discussions with China over the matter, Xinhua reported.

Incomplete statistics indicate the EU has conducted 91 anti-dumping investigations related to Chinese goods. More than 40 of them are still being investigated.

(China Daily October 9, 2002)