The worst corona outbreak in China in a year had made experts pessimistic.
But China's trade numbers beat all expectations.
Only German exporters don't have that much of it.
Beijing - Despite the recent coronavirus outbreak in China, foreign trade in the second largest economy has developed significantly better than expected.
In August, exports in US dollars rose by 25.6 percent compared to the same period last year, as the customs authorities reported on Tuesday.
Imports even grew by 33.1 percent.
Experts had rather expected a slowdown in growth.
Overall there was an increase of 28.8 percent.
The trade surplus was $ 58.3 billion.
However, German exporters could not benefit as much from the upswing in China's foreign trade.
German exports to China only rose by 5.6 percent.
In return, 29.2 percent more was imported from China.
Overall, the trading volume grew by 16.4 percent.
China's trade with the European Union as a whole increased by 22.8 percent.
Its exports to the EU climbed 29.4 percent, while imports rose only 12.4 percent.
China's economy is benefiting from the strong global economy and the weakness of the coronavirus in Asia
"The new foreign trade figures point to a sustainable economic recovery in China," said Jens Hildebrandt from the German Chamber of Commerce in China (AHK) of the German Press Agency.
Even the revival of production in the USA and Europe could not curb the growth of Chinese exports.
"German companies will continue to benefit from the strong domestic demand in China, but at the same time increasingly encounter Chinese competitors in other markets."
The surprising increase in Chinese exports was explained by increased global demand and also by the fact that orders planned for Christmas were brought forward due to the uncertain pandemic situation.
China could also have benefited from the worsening corona crisis in other Southeast Asian countries.
"The strength likely reflects both robust external demand and diverted orders from competing exporters being hampered by Covid," said Bloomberg chief economist Eric Zhu.
"Looking ahead, however, export growth could cool down in the fourth quarter if weaker new export orders affect deliveries and the comparable period of the previous year becomes less favorable."
China: Even high freight costs and disrupted supply chains cannot harm the economy
The strong trading data generated optimism.
Obviously, higher transportation costs and delays in ports that disrupted global supply chains didn't have as much of an impact as expected.
With reference to higher raw material prices and supply bottlenecks in China, experts had actually predicted lower export growth for the rest of the year.
Imports from the USA, which is continuing a trade war with China with punitive tariffs, rose sharply by 33.3 percent.
China's exports to the United States only grew by 15.5 percent.
Trade between the world's two largest economies rose 18.9 percent.
Due to the largest outbreak of the corona virus in a year with the dangerous Delta variant, China had recently lost some of its steam.
The authorities were able to get the spread under control within around four weeks by August.
The closure of a terminal in the important container port of Ningbo due to cases of infection was also lifted after two weeks.
The interruption had also overloaded other ports.
China: tough zero-covid strategy
China, where the coronavirus was first discovered worldwide in December 2019, is pursuing a zero-Covid strategy. With mass tests, contact tracing, forced quarantine, curfews and isolation from abroad, the most populous country has brought the virus under control quite successfully since the summer of last year. Anyone who is still allowed to enter the country has to go to a quarantine facility for three weeks after arrival.
Even if expectations have recently been scaled back a bit, experts are expecting economic growth in China of more than eight percent this year. In the first quarter, the economy grew strongly by 12.7 percent - mainly due to the low comparative basis in the previous year shortly after the outbreak of the virus. The government has set a growth target of “more than six percent” for this year. Last year, China only experienced 2.3 percent growth due to the pandemic.
(dpa)
