China’s total import and export value in April reached 3.84 trillion yuan ($531.46 billion), up 5.6 percent year-on-year. Exports stood at 2.27 trillion yuan, rising 9.3 percent, while imports totaled 1.57 trillion yuan, marking a 0.8 percent increase, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs on Friday.
China’s trade in goods in the first four months of 2025 reached 14.14 trillion yuan, up 2.4 percent year-on-year, with the growth rate accelerating by 1.1 percentage points compared with the first quarter, which continued the steady growth trend, according to official data.
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The exports during the four months surged by 7.5 percent to 8.39 trillion yuan, while the imports went down by 4.2 percent to 5.75 trillion yuan.
In terms of trading with major partners, ASEAN remains China’s top trading partner, with the trade value reaching 2.38 trillion yuan, up 9.2 percent year-on-year, accounting for 16.8 percent of China’s total trade during the period. China’s exports to ASEAN surged by 12.6 percent to 1.48 trillion yuan, while imports grew by 4 percent to 895.17 billion yuan.
The EU was the second-largest partner, with the trade value topping 1.78 trillion yuan, recording a year-on-year increase of 1.1 percent and ranking 12.6 percent of the total trade. China’s exports to the EU grew by 6.1 percent to 1.21 trillion yuan with the imports declining 8.1 percent to 563.59 billion yuan.
The US was China’s third-largest trading partner, with the trade volume at 1.44 trillion yuan, down 2.1 percent and accounting for 10.2 percent of the total. China’s exports to the US declined by 1.5 percent to 1.07 trillion yuan while imports dropped by 3.7 percent to 369.95 billion yuan.
China’s trade with the Belt and Road Initiative partner countries in the first four months recorded a year-on-year increase of 3.9 percent to 7.25 trillion yuan.
The GAC noted that private enterprises recorded the imports and exports of 8.05 trillion yuan, marking a 6.8 percent year-on-year growth, which accounted for 56.9 percent of China’s total foreign trade value and represented a 2.3 percentage points increase compared to the same period last year.
Foreign-invested enterprises reported import-export volumes of 4.1 trillion yuan, reflecting 1.9 percent growth and accounting for 29 percent of China’s total foreign trade value.
Product-wise, electromechanical products accounted for more than 60 percent of exports, which recorded a year-on-year increase of 9.5 percent to 5.04 trillion yuan. Specifically, exports of automatic data processing equipment and components grew by 5.6 percent to 458.71 billion yuan. The exports of integrated circuits totaled 405.15 billion yuan, marking a 14.7 percent increase, while the automotive exports grew to 264.98 billion yuan with a 4 percent rise.
Global Times
The US has been clamoring for decoupling for so long, and now they’ve got it. One of those be careful what you wish for moments.
It’s interesting to see just how asymmetrical the repercussions are so far. Bodes well for China.
Indeed, I’m guessing this is a result of China having expected this turn of events and having been preparing for this eventuality for a while now. Meanwhile, the US failed to make similar preparations on their end simply assuming that they’re still and indispensable economy for the world. One way to look at it is that China is fighting a trade war with a single country, while the US is fighting a trade war with the whole world. Every country the US offends in the process will start looking towards China as an alternative.
Well, Biden (more likely his advisors and entourage) did try to have some mesure of an industrial policy and preemptive measures such as the CHIPS act. Obviously they where insufficient, poorly executed, inefficient, etc. so you are right in that they dialed to make similar preparations. That said we shouldn’t discount the US, it is incompetent but still dangerous and attempting to find solutions to preserve it’s hegemony. Let’s hope it fails.
My biggest worry is that the US will end up flipping the table realizing they lost the economic war and start an actual war.
How does this factor in with the 2027 timeline for confrontation in the scs?
I’ve been on the fence on whether or not the US is actually going to commit to the 2027 timeline or if they’ve given up.
Part of me says they won’t try it, it seems like trump is trying to decouple the US from China. It would be stupid to go after China now, plus it seems like trump is taking an isolationist stance on wars and military operations.
I’m hoping that the trade war disaster is going to sober them up a bit.
To the surprise of… Absolutely no one!
Well, don’t tell US policy makers, they might have an aneurysm… Actually maybe tell them.
Increasingly incompetent administrations are heralding in a new multipolar world, let’s just hope they don’t resort to nukes.
I’m hoping they do resort to nukes and China show incredible missile defence and nuclear containment capabilities making the entire American nuclear arsenal irrelevant.
It’s one of those things that would cleanly and immediately make the U.S. look irrelevant on the world stage.
Nobody should ever hope for nukes to be used… There is no such thing as a perfect air/missile defense.
It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be good enough that the U.S. fail to penetrate it.
And I’d instead argue that hoping for a perfect defense is more reasonable than hoping for Americans to do the right, or even sensible, thing.
Ideally China could perfectly neutralize any nuke. But realistically, even a single nuke hitting a Chinese city would kill tens of millions in seconds. Not to mention, China would have to respond. The loss of life would be horrendous even if China had a very robust defense, the possibility of it failing and the magnitude of a single nuke getting by isn’t worth it. The US, unfortunately, has a lot of nukes.
I’m aware that that is the realistic concern, but if we’re talking about hopes I’d prefer the less realistic, no-casualty scenario that would prove a point.
Still, the youth unemployment rate around 16% is scary.
It has been worse, it was 21.3% in June 2023, but still.
China (15.7% in 2023) is currently near the world median youth unemployment rate. The CIA world Factbook has it at 93/201. What does that mean? You have to look at more that just that figure. Do Cuba (3%) and Liberia (2.3%) have similar economies? What about Italy (28.7%) and Iran (28.8%)?
Youth unemployment is defined as the percent of 15-24 year old persons who are seeking work but can’t find it. Keep in mind 75% of youth is enrolled in tertiary education in China (World Bank) and the MoE says senior high enrollment is 91.6% in 2022 with an increasing trend.
So 15.7% of youth that can’t find jobs is only out of those not already in school/university, and of course only counting those searching.
I can’t point to the causal reason for a relative increase over previous years, but looking at increasing rates of education could explain less otherwise employed youth is getting their education, making the percent of unemployed youth greater. I’d have to look deeper at the statistics, but the point is don’t look at a headline “China has this one bad stat” and make assumptions.
@cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml you might find the stats interesting as well given your comment.
Edit: typo
That’s very interesting info, thank you!
Still, the youth unemployment rate around 16% is scary.
Is it? What does that even mean? Who are they counting? Are they counting full time students as unemployed? What age group are they looking at? Because frankly i don’t think it’s that unusual for young people to go into the workforce fairly late nowadays, especially if they still live with their parents and still go to school.
