China's international trade increased by 4.6% in October
China's yuan-denominated trade with the rest of the world increased by 4.6% in October, a month in which imports progressed less than analysts had expected, and which they expected would continue to boom after setting its best record so far this year in September.
According to official data published this Saturday by the General Administration of Customs, in the tenth month of 2020, China's trade with the rest of the world stood at 2.84 trillion yuan (429,561 million dollars, 361,761 million euros).
Exports from the Asian giant denominated in Yuan increased by 7.6%, while imports increased by 0.9%.
While sales to other countries exceeded analysts' expectations -although somewhat below last month's figure-, the progress of purchases abroad fell short of forecasts.
Despite the fact that imports remained positive for the second month in a row, experts were pointing to much greater progress, following the line of September's data, when they marked their best figure for 2020 by increasing by 11.6% year-on-year.
The greater advance of purchases compared to sales meant that China's trade surplus expanded by 33.4% year-on-year in October, reaching 401,750 million yuan (60,766 million dollars, 51,175 million euros).
Vietnam, USA and Taiwan, protagonists
As has become customary in recent months, two supranational blocs, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU), were placed in the first two places in the classification of China's main trading partners.
In the case of ASEAN, Customs stands out for the 7% advance registered between January and October and, especially, the 18.2% with Vietnam; in the case of the European club, the advance in these ten months was somewhat less spectacular, 3.5%.
Trade denominated in Yuan with the United States, a country with which China has been engaged in a trade war since March 2018, shot up last month by 20.4% year-on-year, with exports up 18.4% and purchases of US products up 28%.
In the accumulated between January and October, trade with the American country advanced by 3.9% year-on-year to 3.2 trillion yuan (484,285 million dollars, 407,841 million euros), with imports playing a greater role (+5.2%) than exports (+3.6%), although the arrival of Chinese products to the US continues to represent more than three quarters of the trade between the two economic powers.
Since the beginning of the year, China has maintained a trade surplus with the United States -one of the first reasons that prompted the government led by Donald Trump to add tariffs to Chinese products- of 1.75 trillion yuan (264.77 billion dollars, 222.98 billion euros), 2.9% higher than in the same period last year.
Although, for example, in September U.S. soybean exports to China reached an all-time record, some analysts recall that in the first three quarters Beijing only met slightly more than half of the goal of purchasing products from the U.S. country that both parties set in their "first phase" agreement to resolve the trade dispute, but it should be remembered that this was signed before the global spread of the covid-19.
A final note on the geographical distribution of Chinese trade: despite their political differences -Beijing has even threatened to take over the island, which it considers a rebel province- China increased its trade with Taiwan by 15% until October, especially on the part of imports of electronic and technological products.
Caution before the COVID
In the first ten months of the year, China's foreign trade reached 25.95 trillion yuan (3.93 trillion dollars, 3.31 trillion euros), 1.1% higher than the same period last year.
In this period, exports increased by 2.4%, while imports fell by 0.5%.
The trade surplus through October stood at 2.71 trillion yuan ($409.47 billion, ?344.83 billion), up 15.7% from the first ten months of 2019.
In its analysis of the figures, Customs highlights the progress of exports in sectors related to the pandemic such as textiles -which include, for example, masks-, whose sales to other countries totaled 908,410 million Yuan (137,401 million dollars, 115,712 million Euros) up to October, 34.8% more in the year-on-year comparison.
Looking ahead, some experts cited by the official press point out that the advance of exports was due to the fact that many customers chose to place their orders with Chinese manufacturers because in the Asian giant the control of the pandemic allows them to comply on time while in others like India it is not so, something that could be maintained for the rest of the year.
However, others warn that the continued spread of covid-19 in the West, where some countries have returned to a containment situation, could again have a negative impact on China's foreign trade.