Chinese exports grew at their fastest pace in 19 months in October, surging 11.4 percent year-on-year in dollar terms, data from China's customs authority showed on Saturday. Experts are linking the better-than-expected exports to China's resilience as the world's factory and its quick containment of the coronavirus as orders for the upcoming Christmas season are on the rise. 

Imports surged 4.7 percent in US dollar terms in October, official data showed.  

From January to October, China's trade value grew 1.1 percent year-on-year to 25.95 trillion yuan ($3.93 trillion), the General Administration of Customs said, extending an upward trend in the first nine months.  Trade grew 0.7 percent in the first nine months.

Experts credit export growth to China's strong capacity to churn out goods and recovery from COVID-19 amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in emerging economies, such as India and other Southeast Asian countries that have found it hard to finish orders placed by other countries.

"Some countries cannot fulfill the order before the upcoming peak Christmas season as the coronavirus has hit their supply chains. That brought some orders to China and made the country's October export results outstanding," Bai Ming, deputy director of the Ministry of Commerce's International Market Research Institute, told the Global Times on Saturday, citing robust textile orders in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta in China. 

In addition to the rapid growth of exports, Tian Yun, vice director of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, applauded China's imports growth, saying it shows domestic demand is gradually improving. Though the growth is not as large as exports, imports are recovering especially as prices, such as crude oil, drop, he added. 

"As the US and Europe are still struggling to cope with COVID-19, overseas demands for Chinese goods will not see huge declines," Tian said, predicting there will be more orders shifting to China in the last quarter this year and the beginning of next year. 

In the first 10 months, China's exports of textile products, including masks, grew by 34.8 percent to 908.41 billion yuan year-on-year, official data showed on Saturday. 

Based on the October's performance, Bai said China's GDP growth in the fourth quarter may surpass 5 percent. The country's GDP in the third quarter expanded 4.9 percent year-on-year, causing the economy to bounce back from the mere 0.7 percent growth in the first three quarters. 

In the first 10 months, China's imports of integrated circuits soared 22.4 percent, and iron ore imports increased 11.2 percent year-on-year even as prices jumped 3.8 percent. Soybean imports climbed to a high of 17.7 percent. 

Global Times 


Newspaper headline: China's October exports growth hits 19-month high post COVID-19