Chinese exports and imports soared in July, official data showed today, as the manufacturing powerhouse benefits from a global AI boom lifting overseas demand for its tech products.<\/p>\n
The world’s second-largest economy last year achieved a historic trade surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion, helping its manufacturing sector through a prolonged slump in domestic consumption.<\/p>\n
The export boom has been propelled further this year by increased demand for Chinese data-processing equipment and related components, as companies rush to build artificial intelligence capacity.<\/p>\n
Exports climbed 23.9% year-on-year last month, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) reported, compared with a 23% forecast by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n
Overseas shipments of computers and related parts jumped 45.2% in the first seven months of this year, the data showed.<\/p>\n
“Export and import values remain elevated, helped by soaring global demand for electronics and green tech products,” wrote Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics.<\/p>\n
China’s trade surplus appears to be on pace to match that of last year, reaching $687 billion to the end of July, the data showed today.<\/p>\n
The yawning gap has increasingly raised eyebrows abroad – particularly in Europe, where leaders worry about floods of Chinese exports squeezing out local manufacturers. Beijing has insisted it never deliberately pursued a trade surplus.<\/p>\n
The Communist Party’s Politburo – the decision-making body headed by President Xi Jinping – urged a more “balanced” trade development at a key meeting late last month.<\/p>\n
China-US flare-up<\/p>\n
“Export growth continued to support the economy in July,” Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management, wrote in a note after today’s data.<\/p>\n
“I expect intense negotiations between China and (its) major trading partners in coming months on what can be done to make trade more balanced,” he added.<\/p>\n
Today’s figures also showed that imports increased 27.5% in July, extending this year’s strong performance even as main indicators of domestic demand have remained weak.<\/p>\n
However, that was slower than the 36% surge seen in June, and also missed a Bloomberg forecast of 29.5% growth.<\/p>\n
The growth has been achieved despite considerable pressure on the global trading system from the war in the Middle East and simmering trade frictions between Beijing and Washington.<\/p>\n
China’s shipments to the US rose 17% year-on-year last month, today’s data showed, as the countries remain locked in a trade war despite efforts to ease tensions.<\/p>\n
That brought China’s surplus with its superpower rival this year to nearly $171 billion to the end of July, according to the official data.<\/p>\n
The latest figures come days after a fresh flare-up in trade tensions between the world’s top two economies.<\/p>\n
Following sanctions imposed by Washington over forced labour and national security concerns, Beijing on Wednesday announced restrictions on drone exports to the US and blacklisted six firms.<\/p>\n
China and the USs spent much of last year embroiled in an escalating trade war but reached a truce when US President Donald Trump met Xi in October.<\/p>\n
The relationship will undergo further scrutiny in coming weeks as officials prepare for a scheduled state visit by Xi to the US in late September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese exports and imports soared in July, official data showed today, as the manufacturing powerhouse benefits from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-585848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}