China’s politically sensitive trade surplus expanded to US$31.48 billion last month, as exports rose by a fifth to hit a new record high, the customs agency said yesterday.
The trade surplus — a major point of tension for China’s key trade partners, the US and Europe — was well in excess of June’s US$22.27 billion.
Analysts said the figures, which also outstripped a Dow Jones forecast of US$26.00 billion based on a poll of economists, would add further pressure on Beijing to allow the yuan to appreciate.
Photo: AFP
China’s major trading partners have long complained that the yuan is deliberately undervalued to give Chinese exporters an unfair advantage.
“The expansion of China’s structural surplus will certainly add more pressure for RMB [yuan] appreciation,” said Alistair Thornton, a Beijing-based China analyst at IHS Global Insight. “Both a weakening dollar and a softening inflation outlook in China will allow authorities to step up the pace of nominal appreciation against the [US] dollar.”
Exports were up 20.4 percent year-on-year to US$175.13 billion — a fresh monthly record — while imports rose by 22.9 percent, the customs agency said on its Web site.
Thornton said last month’s export rebound was partly due to seasonal factors and reflected demand for Christmas-season orders overseas.
“Given that most orders for the next few months have already been placed, it is unlikely that the drastic downward shift in global sentiment will have too big an impact on exports through the short run,” he said. “Nonetheless ... the recent market turmoil will certainly feed into the data towards the end of the year.”
The surge in exports came despite manufacturing activity in China contracting for the first time in a year last month due to Beijing’s efforts to slow the economy and weakening overseas demand, according to HSBC data.
However, some experts said consumer confidence in the US and Europe was likely to hit China’s exports in the coming months.
“The data is slightly above expectations with the wider trade surplus,” said Tang Yunfei (唐雲飛), Beijing-based economist with Founder Securities (方正證券). “But given the situation in the US and eurozone, consumer confidence there is likely to slide in coming months and negatively impact the exports.”
“However, if China takes effective countermeasures, such as more pro-growth policies, maybe it will drive the recovery of confidence globally,” Tang added.
An unprecedented US rating downgrade last week and the ongoing debt crises in the US and Europe have sparked fears of a fresh global recession.
China’s trade surpluses have allowed it to accumulate around US$3.2 trillion worth of foreign exchange reserves, nearly US$1.2 trillion of which are in US Treasury bonds.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”