China is gearing up for a new round of trade battles with the US, EU and other leading trading powers after failing to secure widespread recognition for a bid to be viewed as a “market economy” under World Trade Organisation rules.

Beijing has been pushing for a provision that allows trading partners to use a special formula to calculate punitive tariffs for non-market economies in anti-dumping cases to expire with Sunday’s 15th anniversary of its WTO membership.

But that expiry is now in dispute. A move once viewed as automatic has become increasingly contentious after cheap Chinese steel flooded on to world markets and sparked a wave of politically sensitive anti-dumping cases. As a result, China is being forced to challenge new dumping cases brought against it in the US and other jurisdictions in a process that could take years and prove a significant irritant in Beijing’s trade relations with the world.