China’s foreign trade hit good numbers in March, driven by large imports of electronics and strong exports, with imports up 38.1 percent compared with the same month last year when the economy was hit hard by the epidemic.
Last March, China’s imports fell 0.9 percent. According to China Customs on Tuesday; imports rose 38.1 percent in March this year.
Dutch International Bank economist Iris Pang noted that this highest import growth value since February 2017 was “very distorted”. A Bloomberg survey of economists expected imports to rise 24.4 percent.
China imported a large number of electronic components in March. Customs data show that China’s purchases of foreign integrated circuit products rose 33.6 percent in the first quarter, and diode and semiconductor purchases rose 52.1 percent.
According to Tommy Xie, an economist at OCBC in Singapore, this indicates that Beijing is raising new tensions over a “possible technology war between the U.S. and China” or by “stockpiling” electronic components.
China only released cumulative figures for imports from January to February in February, up 22.2 percent. China stopped releasing detailed trade data last year due to the economic slowdown caused by the epidemic.
On the export side, China’s foreign exports rose 30.6 percent in March from a year earlier. The figure was lower than the 38 percent expected by the analysis.
The analysis pointed out that the epidemic continues in many parts of the world, and China’s exports largely benefited from strong demand for medical devices and pharmaceuticals, with exports of medical devices up 71 percent year-on-year and exports of pharmaceutical products up 78 percent.
ASEAN countries surpassed the European Union and the United States as China’s largest trading partners.
In terms of trade surplus, China’s overall trade surplus in March was $13.8 billion, the lowest level since the start of the epidemic more than a year ago. The trade surplus with the U.S. was $21.4 billion, also the lowest since early 2020.
China’s trade surplus with the U.S. has been a point of contention between the two sides, with Trump launching a trade war against China in 2018: additional tariffs on Chinese imports. The two countries signed a final war agreement last January before the epidemic began, with China pledging to buy more U.S. agricultural products.
Recent Comments