[May19CGTNJapanese]He Yadong, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce of China, announced at a regular press conference on the 16th that “China’s imports and exports in April increased 8% compared to the same month last year, significantly exceeding March. Overall, April’s foreign trade performance was in line with expectations.”

By size, exports and imports reached the highest level ever. In April, exports and imports totaled 3.64 trillion yuan (approximately 78.34 trillion yen), up 80 billion yuan (approximately 1.715 trillion yen) from March. The growth rates were 8% higher for exports and imports compared to the same period last year, 5.1% higher for exports, and 12.2% higher for imports.

Looking at the markets, both traditional and emerging markets are showing an upward trend. Driven by factors such as inventory clearing and demand recovery, exports and imports to traditional markets turned from a decrease to an increase in April, with exports and imports to the EU increasing by 3.3% and those to the United States increasing by 6.2%. At the same time, exports and imports to emerging markets continued to maintain high growth rates, with exports and imports to ASEAN increasing by 14.4% and those to Belt and Road co-construction countries increasing by 9%, both of which exceeded the overall figures.

By industry, machinery and electrical products were the main driver of growth. Imports and exports of machinery and electrical products grew by 10.4%, pushing up the overall growth rate of imports and exports by 5.1 percentage points. Exports of electronic information products recovered, and imports of upstream integrated circuits increased by 20.4%.

“Currently, global trade has been on a gradual recovery trend since the fourth quarter of 2023, which has stabilized the confidence of foreign trade enterprises to a certain extent,” He said. “According to the Ministry of Commerce’s recent research, new contracts of key foreign trade enterprises have improved for four consecutive months, and more than 80 percent of exhibitors at the Canton Fair have stable or increasing backlog of orders.” (c)CGTN Japanese/AFPBB News