China’s 2013 trade surplus rises to $260bn

Beijing — China’s annual trade surplus rose nearly 13 per cent year-on-year to some $260 billion last year as export growth continued to outpace import growth, the government said yesterday.
Exports were valued at $2.21 trillion, up 7.9 per cent year-on-year, while imports rose 7.3 per cent to $1.95 trillion, customs data showed.
Total trade value increased by 7.6 per cent in 2013 to 4.16 trillion dollars, the General Administration of Customs reported.
Exports from the world’s number two economy rose 7.9 per cent to $2.21 trillion, while imports increased 7.3 per cent to $1.95 trillion, the General Administration of Customs announced.
The trade surplus stood at $259.75 billion, up 12.8 per cent from 2012.
Total trade came to $4.16 trillion, an increase of 7.6 per cent, just below the government’s eight per cent target.
Nonetheless it was a record high and effectively confirmed a historic geo-economic shift, making China the world’s biggest trader of physical goods, not including services.
Reports last February said the United States’ total trade in goods was lower than China’s in 2012, but Customs said due to differences in calculation methods the change happened for the first time in 2013 — although full US data for the year has yet to be released.
“It is very likely that China overtook the US to become the world’s largest trading country in goods in 2013 for the first time,” said Customs spokesman Zheng Yuesheng.
The European Union was China’s biggest trading partner, Customs said, followed by the United States, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Hong Kong and Japan.
Between them the traditional markets of the EU, US and Japan accounted for 33.5 per cent of China’s trade, down 1.7 percentage points, suggesting emerging markets’ share of business was growing.
“Generally speaking, the environment for trade to grow in 2014 is likely to be better than 2013,” Zheng said, citing improvements in international demand and domestic economic factors.
For December, China’s trade surplus fell 17.4 per cent to $25.64 billion, yesterday’s data showed, short of the median $32.2 billion forecast in a survey of 13 economists by The Wall Street Journal.
Exports increased 4.3 per cent to $207.74 billion last month, while imports climbed 8.3 per cent to $182.1 billion.
China’s 2013 trade performance came as the economy turned in a mixed performance, slowing during the first half of the year before showing some vigour in the final six months.
A government report last month cited in state media suggested Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 7.6 per cent in 2013, from the 7.7 per cent in 2012, which was the worst performance in 13 years.
“We maintain our previous viewpoint that economic growth may have peaked in the third quarter and dropped back in the fourth quarter,” Wendy Chen, Shanghai-based economist at Nomura International, said.
“It will likely continue to be on a downward trend in the first two quarters of this year.”
President Xi Jinping — who assumed office in March after becoming head of the ruling Communist Party in November 2012 — wants to transform the economy to one in which domestic demand is the key growth driver, rather than public investment.
China’s yuan currency gained more than three per cent against the dollar last year, hitting a series of record highs since Beijing launched its modern foreign exchange market in 1994.