Econintersect: China’s exports were up 5.1% in July from the same month in 
2012, imports increased by 10.9% and the country saw a trade balance surplus of $17.8 billion. Bloomberg News called the data a “further sign economy stabilizing“. Expectations had been for less than half the increase in exports. The higher number increases the possibility that China will be able to reach the government goal of achieving 7.5% GDP growth for 2013.
The July numnbers were a marked improvement from June when exports reported a decline of 3.1% year-over-year and imports fell by 0.7%. However, the balance of trade surplus ($17.8 billion) was the lowest in the last four months. In June the surplus was $27.1 billion. The 12-month average is $21.3 billion.
According to Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong, said in a quote in the Bloomberg story:
“This confirms our view that the economy has bottomed out and will re-accelerate. We’d like to call the end to worries over China for this year.”
Shen Jianguang, economist at Mizuho Securities Asia in Hong Kong. quoted by Reuters, was more sanguine:
“I would call it normalization, rather than recovery, of China’s exports and imports. “China is able to reach an annual growth rate of 5 percent in trade, but the official 8 percent target is a bit hard to hit.”
Michael Kitchen at Market Watch observed that there is wide spread skepticism about the accuracy of Chinese trade data, especially following the inflated numbers resulting from a false invoice scandal earlier this year.
A tweet by AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver was quoted by Kitchen:
“China July trade data … probably overstates [the gains] as June understated. Truth [is] in between.”
Sources:
- China Trade Rebounds in Further Sign Economy Stabilizing (Alan Wong, Bloomberg News, 08 August 2013)
- China trade shows signs of recovery (Simon Rabinovitch, Financial Times, 08 August 2013)
- China July exports up annual 5.1 percent, imports surge (Reuters, 08 August 2013)
- China exports, imports rebound sharply in July (Michael Kitchen, Market Watch, 08 August 2013)
