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The Financial Times has reported that China’s foreign trade grew faster than expected in the first two months of 2024, driven partly by electronics and increased exports to emerging markets and Russia, with Beijing’s foreign minister touting “a new paradigm” in relations with Moscow.
China’s total exports rose by 7.1% in January and February compared with a year earlier, beating a Reuters poll of analysts that forecast an increase of just 1.9% Total imports were up 3.5%, compared with a 1.5% estimate, suggesting that Western analysts have significantly downplayed the strength of the Chinese economy.
Tao Wang, chief China economist at UBS, was quoted as saying “A big driver of China’s export recovery has been the upswing of the global tech product cycle, basically electronics. We have seen that cycle bottoming out in the latter part of 2023.”
The improvement in China’s trade, which compares with a 5.2% growth for the full 2023 data, is on target to help China meet what is described as an “ambitious” target of 5% GDP growth for 2024.
China-Russia bilateral trade hit a record US$240 billion in 2023. In January and February 2024, China’s exports to Russia remained resilient, growing by 12.5% year on year, while imports rose by 6.7%. If maintained during all of 2024, this would suggest a total China-Russia 2024 bilateral trade increase of another 9.6% to about US$274 billion. Some analysts have suggested that this will not occur due to an already high base and limited space for Chinese exporters to further expand their market share.
