China's foreign trade sustains resilience, upward momentum

A ship loaded with cargoes leaves a container terminal in Lianyungang, east China's Jiangsu Province, July 13, 2021. (Photo by Wang Jianmin/Xinhua)

BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- China's foreign trade maintained growth momentum in the first 11 months of the year amid signs of global economic recovery and resilient demand.

During the Jan.-Nov. period, total imports and exports of the country expanded 22 percent year on year to 35.39 trillion yuan (5.55 trillion U.S. dollars), official data showed Tuesday.

The figure, already surpassing the 32.16-trillion-yuan total for all of 2020, marked a 24-percent increase from the pre-epidemic level in 2019, according to the General Administration of Customs.

Both exports and imports continued double-digit growth in the first 11 months of the year, surging 21.8 percent and 22.2 percent from a year earlier, respectively.

In November alone, the country's imports and exports rose 20.5 percent year on year to 3.72 trillion yuan, up 11.4 percent from that in October, the data showed.

The continuing global recovery is supporting China's exports in terms of demand, said Zheng Houcheng, director of Yingda Securities Research Institute, adding that he expects overseas demand to remain resilient in the coming month.

Sun Binbin, chief fixed-income analyst at Tianfeng Securities, attributed the surge in imports last month to the increase in purchasing managers' indices and the easing of production capacity constraints.

Tuesday's data also showed month-on-month pick-ups in both imports and exports in November, which reflected export production's strong demand for raw material imports as well as domestic year-end consumer demand at the same time, Sun noted.

In the Jan.-Nov. period, China's trade with its top three trading partners -- the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the European Union and the United States -- maintained sound growth.

During the period, the growth rates of China's trade value with the three trading partners stood at 20.6 percent, 20 percent and 21.1 percent, respectively, customs data showed.

Private enterprises saw the fastest growth rate in imports and exports by increasing 27.8 percent to 17.15 trillion yuan in the first 11 months, accounting for 48.5 percent of the country's total.

The imports and exports of foreign-invested firms and that of state-owned enterprises rose 13.1 percent and 27.3 percent, respectively, in the period.

China rolled out a slew of measures in 2021 to ramp up foreign trade growth, including accelerating the development of new business forms and modes, further deepening reform to facilitate cross-border trade, optimizing its business environment at ports, and promoting reform and innovation to facilitate trade and investment in pilot free trade zones.