Lamy met Monday in Beijing with new Commerce Minister Bo Xilai with these issues, and a new round of World Trade Organisation negotiations, topping the agenda, Lamy's spokesman said.

China wants full market economy status in order to have a powerful defense against charges it is dumping its goods by selling them abroad at below the production price, but has yet to satisfy EU concerns.

"We need to be assured that prices and costs in China are based on market economic forces rather than state forces," Lamy's spokeswoman Aranzha Gonzalez told AFP.

"When we are satisfied we will grant them full market status. We have requested a large amount of information. They have provided it in bits and pieces and we are dealing with it."

She stressed it was a technical problem rather than a political problem.

Since China is currently not characterised by the EU as a full market economy, countries that level dumping accusations against it can decline to factor in China's own domestic production costs.

Instead, they can pick data from a "surrogate" country with a recognised market economy, often leading to a huge mark-up in production costs and making the charge of artificially low pricing more plausible.

The spokeswoman also said China's concerns over EU enlargement was discussed and Lamy reassured Bo in "a very constructive meeting" that China would not lose out.

"We explained to them what enlargement means -- 100 million new consumers for China, expanded markets," said Gonzalez.

"We explained that the level of tariffs in the new 10 countries will go down."