China's foreign trade surge in first two months revives global recovery, experts say

BEIJING - With its foreign trade maintaining an upward momentum in the first two months of 2021, China's resilient economy and greater opening-up will give more confidence to its trading partners and global economic recovery, overseas experts and organizations have said.

The country's total imports and exports of goods expanded 41.2 percent year-on-year to $834.49 billion in the January-February period, according to China's General Administration of Customs.

Meanwhile, its total exports soared 60.6 percent year-on-year to 468.87 billion dollars, the GAC reported.

Facing a sluggish global economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, "China's presence looms large," said Tong Shiping, a professor of economics at Japan's Dokkyo University, adding that "at the same time, a market of 1.4 billion people remains attractive to global investors."

Commenting on the double-digit growth in China's exports to its major trading partners year-on-year -- 75.1 percent to the United States, 51.9 percent to the European Union and 43.2 percent to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- Tong said this has shown growing dependence on Chinese products across the world.

"The rise in exports will play a locomotive in the rapid recovery of China's economy," the professor added.

"China is doing better, driven by strong gains in manufacturing," Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, a major accounting firm, wrote Monday in a blog post.

"China has become an even larger export platform post-pandemic than it was prior. Part of that is due to the outsize role it plays in the production of PPE. Another reason is that moving manufacturing facilities back to the US never occurred," she noted.

Also in the January-February period, China's total imports rose 22.2 percent to $365.62 billion, according to the GAC.

In 2020, exports of such countries and regions as Japan, the EU and Latin America declined significantly, while their exports to China still showed a steady upward trend, becoming a bright spot in this field.

"In many parts of the world, both on bilateral and multilateral terms, China's trade with its partners is expanding and deepening year after year," said Cavince Adhere, a China-Africa relations expert based in Nairobi, pointing out that China has surpassed the United States to become the EU's top trading partner and has been Africa's largest trading partner for 11 years.

"China's economic vibrancy injects optimism for a better showing for the global economy," Adhere said.