Peter Mandelson, the European Union's trade commissioner, told China yesterday to "rebalance the terms of trade" by opening its markets to more imports from the EU if it wanted to receive long-sought market economy status, Raphael Minder reports from Strasbourg.

Mr Mandelson said that, even though China had been "making progress'' in fulfilling the technical criteria required to be granted market economy status (MES), Beijing should not expect to receive that higher economic ranking soon.