China’s Trade Surplus Grows 21.5% in November

On December 10, 2018 source: securities daily

Abstract: On 8 December, China’s total volume of import and export trade in the first 11 months to November had surpassed that of last year, up 11.1% year on year to 27.88 trillion yuan. Besides, exports rose 8.2% to 14.92 trillion yuan while imports grew 14.6% to 12.96 trillion yuan; trade surplus narrowed 21.1% to 1.96 trillion yuan according to data from China Customs.

On 8 December, China’s total volume of import and export trade in the first 11 months to November had surpassed that of last year, up 11.1% year on year to 27.88 trillion yuan. Besides, exports rose 8.2% to 14.92 trillion yuan while imports grew 14.6% to 12.96 trillion yuan; trade surplus narrowed 21.1% to 1.96 trillion yuan according to data from China Customs.

In November, China total volume of import and export value grew year on year 9.1% to 2.83 trillion yuan in RMB. Besides, exports increased 10.2% to 1.57 trillion yuan, prior 20%; exports was up 7.8% to 1.26 trillion yuan, prior 25.7%; trade surplus expanded 21.5% to 306.04 billion yuan.

After import and export in October was better than expectation, both of those in November fell down and showed lower than expectation. Chen Jianheng, a date analyst of Zhongjin Gold Corp. Ltd. figured that exports shares and America domestic huge demand supported high prior export growth, but export growth would turn down gradually at last not only to America but also to the world because of a decline in external demand with an obvious drop-off order.

Macroeconomic researcher Sun Fu talked to a reporter from Securities Daily that the exports growth in November fell sharply mainly owing to the relatively large cardinal number year on year. November singular exports sum in 2015/ 2016 was 195 billion dollars or so, and that in 2017 increased greatly to 217.4 billion dollars driven by external demand towards good, 10% higher than the corresponding period, but the exports pressure of Q4 was obviously higher than the first 3 quarters this year. Slow external demand is the main influence factor that export growth slew down while high cardinal number gave rise to fluctuation between months.     .

Referring the downturn of imports data in November, Chen Jianheng said the sharp drop-off in imports was out of expectation, it is relevant to two aspects, on one hand, International oil price and a large quantity of commodity price fell down since October, which caused import price slew down more quickly, on the other hand the collapse in price of domestic industrial products in November made import of raw materials become more cautious.

Sun Fu figured that the high cardinal number also affects sharp decline in import growth last year, on another aspect, domestic demand keeping slow is an important factor. One is import growth of agricultural, mechanical and electric, new high-tech products turned negative in November from the respective of main import commodities; the other is the import growth of all countries slew down except Australia from the respective of main import countries.

Regarding foreign trade of next year, Chen Jianheng said, it would be hard for China trade surplus to obvious expansion next year, but in the situation that RMB exchange rate did not devalue, the deficit of service would tend to widen. China current account surplus may narrow next year, which meant that it would be tougher for China to gain profit from overseas continually. Thus, if exchange devalue could not achieve stimulation of exportation, boosting economy could only rely on domestic demand and reducing domestic interest rate, at the same time supporting our economy by increasing financial deficit and financial expenditure. As a result, domestic interest rate would continue to be a downtrend.