Japanese exports to China fall amid islands row

Japanese exports to China continued to decline in October amid tension over the Diaoyu Islands, while China's slowing economic growth and sluggish demand in the debt-troubled European Union also took their toll on Japanese exports.

Japanese shipments to China, its largest export market, slumped 11.6 percent year-on-year in October to 948 billion yen ($11.55 billion), compared with a 14.1 percent year-on-year drop in September, according to Japan's Ministry of Finance.

Meanwhile, Japanese imports from China rose 3.6 percent year-on-year to 1,354 billion yen, yielding a trade deficit of 406.5 billion yen, the eighth consecutive monthly deficit.

China's slowing economic growth this year reduced demand for Japanese products, while the EU debt crisis and the US economic downturn damped Japanese exports as well as exports to China for manufacturing and re-export to these two major markets.

"The territorial dispute over the Diaoyu Islands and Chinese consumers' boycott of Japanese brands further affected Japanese exports," said Jin Baisong, deputy director of the Department of Chinese Trade and Studies at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a think tank of the Ministry of Commerce.

Owing to differences in statistics, China's General Administration of Customs showed that Chinese imports from Japan declined 10.2 percent in October from a year earlier to $13.94 billion, compared with a 9.6 percent drop in September. Bilateral trade in the January to October period dropped 2.1 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 1.8 percent decline in the first nine months.

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