China’s Exports Surge From 2020 Lockdown as Demand Booms

(Bloomberg) -- China’s exports surged in the first two months of the year, reflecting strong global demand for manufactured goods and figures partly skewed by the low base in 2020 when the economy was in lockdown.

• Exports jumped 60.6% in dollar terms in the January-February period from a year earlier, data from the General Administration of Customs showed Sunday, well above the 40% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. In the same period last year, exports had plunged 17.4%
• Imports climbed 22.2% in the first two months of the year from a year ago, compared with a 16% gain predicted in the survey. The trade surplus reached $103.25 billion in the period

Key Insights

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• The trade surplus with the U.S. reached $51.3 billion in the first two months of the year. Trade with the U.S. surged 81.3% in the period from a year earlier. For a breakdown of China’s main trading partners, click on this table
• The customs agency started releasing combined data for the first two months of the year in 2020, aligning with the National Bureau of Statistics’s practice, due to disruptions caused by the Lunar Year Year

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