China's foreign trade crosses $4 trillion mark in 2013

BEIJING: China's total foreign trade crossed the $4 trillion mark for the first time last year, growing by 7.6 per cent to $4.16 trillion, but fell short of the official expected growth figure of 8 per cent.

Its exports rose by 7.9 per cent year-on-year to $2.21 trillion in 2013, while imports increased by 7.3 per cent to $1.95 trillion, according to the customs data released today.

The growth rate, however, is slightly lower than the government's full-year target of 8 per cent, published in the beginning of 2013.

The foreign trade surplus rose to $259.75 billion in 2013, an increase of 12.8 per cent from a year earlier, Zheng Yuesheng, spokesman for the General Administration of Customs, told the media.

In December, China's foreign trade value hit a new high of $389.8 billion, up 6.2 per cent from a year ago. December's exports stood at $207.7 billion, rising 4.3 per cent, but significantly lower than the 12.7 per cent growth in November and 5.6 per cent in October. Imports grew 8.3 per cent year-on-year in December from 5.3 per cent in November.

"Exports growth slowdown (in December) was in line with market expectations, while imports growth was better than expected," state run Xinhua news agency quoted Lu Ting, chief China economist with the Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as saying.

Zheng said China's trade with the European Union (EU), its biggest trade partner, edged up 2.1 per cent year-on-year to $559.1 billion in 2013. Its export to the EU stood at $339 billion and imports at $220.1 billion from the region. Trade with the US, China's second-biggest trade partner, rose 7.5 per cent to $521 billion. Its exports stood at $368.4 billion to the US, while imports rose to $152.6 billion.

China's trade with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, its third-largest trading partner, rose 10.9 per cent year-on-year to $443.6 billion in 2013. However, China's trade with Japan contracted 5.1 per cent year-on-year to $312.55 billion, as the two countries continued to spur over the disputed islands. "Today's trade data make us quite comfortable with our neither bullish nor bearish 2014 GDP and trade forecasts," Lu said.