File photo of China's Commerce Ministry spokesperson Shen Danyang [Photo: Chinanews.com]

China's Commerce Ministry has issued a call to the European Union, asking the bloc to grant China Market Economy Status according to World Trade Organization rules.

"No matter how the European Commission makes assessments or comments, we are mainly concerned about the fact that according to Article 15 of the "Accession of the People's Republic of China," members of the WTO should terminate the "surrogate" country practice by December 11 this year, and this is an international obligation that WTO members must abide by."

The spokesman stresses that recognition of China's Market Economy Status is also beneficial to China-EU economic relations.

China is now the second largest trading partner of the EU and has been a WTO member for 15 years.

The EU earlier announced that it will start the assessment process soon.

EU Ambassador to China Hans Dietmar Schweisgut says the assessment will take months.

"This is not… because there is always some confusion… this is not about recognizing, as such, whether China is a market economy, we are talking about the relevant provision and accession protocol, which is linked to procedures for anti-dumping and the question of determining prices. It's a very complicated technical issue. Just to be clear, we are talking about a limited interpretation of the accession protocol, which implies legal issues but which obviously also has economic implications."

Since China is currently not characterized by the EU as a full market economy, countries that level dumping accusations against it always pick data from a "surrogate" country with a recognized market economy.

Official numbers show trade disputes affect 140 to 150 billion U.S. dollars in the country's foreign trade annually.