China's Foreign Trade Close to 200 Billion U.S. DollarsChina's foreign trade has been increasing despite sluggish growth in the world economy, and the country's two-way trade from January to May was up 13.5 percent to 197.68 billion U.S. dollars.Statistics newly released by the General Administration of Customs show that in May alone, China's foreign trade totaled 39. 63 billion U.S. dollars, a 6.9 percent increase over the same period of last year. The past five months saw an 11 percent increase in China's exports, which totaled 102.5 billion U.S. dollars, a slowdown from last month's 13.2 percent. Analysts here attributed this slowdown to the overall decline in market demand. Meanwhile, China's imports from January to May reached 95.18 billion U.S dollars, 16.3 percent up year on year. Two-way trade of overseas-invested enterprises in China totaled 100.45 billion U.S. dollars. In addition, overseas-invested enterprises imported 5.9 billion U.S. dollars worth of facilities as investment in China, Chinese Customs' statistics says. While trade of China's state-owned enterprises increased at a lower rate of 5.4 percent to 85.12 billion U.S. dollars, two-way trade of collective-ownership and private enterprises was up by 63. 9 percent to 12.12 billion U.S. dollars. China's exports to the United States and Japan totaled 20.32 billion U.S. dollars and 17.95 billion U.S. dollars respectively. Meanwhile, imports from these two major trade partners added up to 10.1 billion U.S. dollars and 17.27 billion U.S. dollars. Machinery and electric products remained China's major export commodities, totaling 5.24 billion U.S. dollars and accounting for 44.1 percent of the country's total exports. Major import commodities included refined oil, which totaled 8. 9 million tons, industrial manufactured products, which added up to 76.61 billion U.S. dollars, electric products, 21.7 billion U.S. dollars and steel, 7.03 million tons. |
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