The latest data from China’s General Administration of Customs points to a sharp rise in tangible foreign trade following a decline in 2016.
GAC data indicates that the total value of China’s tangible foreign goods trade increased 19.6% YoY in the first half of 2017, rising to 13.14 trillion yuan, with exports rising 15% to 7.21 trillion yuan and imports surging 25.7% to 5.93 trillion yuan.
China’s trade surplus stands at 1.28 trillion yuan, for a 17.7% decline.
GAC spokesperson Huang Songping said that general trade increased as a share of total trade, rising 20.5% to 7.46 trillion yuan, comprising 56.7% of China’s total overseas trade.
Trade with “One Belt One Road” countries also saw a heightened increase in the wake of the initiative’s launch.
China’s trade with the EU, US and ASEAN saw increases of 17.4%, 21.3% and 21.9%, comprising 41.4% of the total value, while during the same period trade with Russia, Pakistan, Poland and Kazakhstan posted gains of 33.1%, 14.5%, 24.6% and 46.8% respectively.
Private companies also saw their share of China’s overseas trade increase, with a 20.6% rise to 5.02 trillion yuan, or 38.2% of the country’s total foreign trade, and an increase of 0.3 percentage points compared to the same period last year.
Private company increased 17.6% to 3.37 trillion yuan, accounting for 46.7% of the total value of exports for a YoY share increase of 1.1 percentage points.
Machinery, electronic products and traditional labour intensive goods continued to dominate Chinese exports.
Exports of machinery and electronic products increased by 14.6% in the first half of the year to reach 4.13 trillion yuan, comprising 57.2% of China’s total exports.
Vehicle and ship exports saw gains of 32.5% and 25.1% respectively, while mobile phone exports increased 13.5%.
Exports of traditional labour intensive goods increased by 12.9% to 1.48 trillion yuan, comprising 20.5% of total export value.
China also saw a consistent increase in imports commodities such iron ore, crude oil and natural gas during the first half.
Iron ore imports increased by 9.3% to 539 million tons, crude oil imports increased by 13.8% to 212 million tons, while natural gas imports increased by 15.9% to 31.09 million tons.
Refined oil imports fell by 2.8% to 15.03 million tonnes, while copper impost fell by 18.4% to 2.23 million tons.
During the same period the price of China’s imported commodities increased by 12.7%, with imported iron ore prices rising 55%, crude oil prices rising 47.9%, natural gas increasing 10% and refined oil rising by 35.6%.
