China's foreign trade registered steady growth in the first five months of the year despite growing external uncertainties.

The country's foreign trade of goods rose 4.1 percent year on year during that time to 12.1 trillion yuan ($1.75 trillion), data from the General Administration of Customs of China (GACC) showed on June 10.

Exports increased 6.1 percent year on year to 6.5 trillion yuan ($940 billion), while imports grew 1.8 percent to 5.6 trillion yuan ($810 billion), resulting in a trade surplus of 893 billion yuan ($130 billion). In May alone, the country's exports and imports totaled 2.59 trillion yuan ($375 billion), up 2.9 percent from a year earlier.

China's exports of mechanical and electrical products reached 3.8 trillion yuan ($549.5 billion) in the first five months, up 5.1 percent, accounting for 58.4 percent of the total value of exports. Among them, exports of electrical appliances and electronic products were 1.7 trillion yuan ($246 billion), up 6.3 percent. Machinery and equipment totaled 1.14 trillion yuan ($165 billion), up 4.1 percent.

In the same period, the total exports of seven kinds of labor-intensive products including clothing, furniture and plastic products totaled 1.21 trillion yuan ($175 billion), up 7.2 percent, accounting for 18.6 percent of the total export value. In addition, exports of steel products were 29.09 million tons, up 2.5 percent. Exports of automobiles registered an increase of 2.1 percent to 440,000 units.

In the first five months, the import volume of products such as crude oil and gas increased. Crude oil imports reached 205 million tons with a 7.7-percent growth rate. Coal imports stood at 127 million tons, rising by 5.6 percent. At an average import price of 3,096.6 yuan ($448) per ton, which saw an increase of 23 percent, the volume of imported gas reached 39.43 million tons, up 13.4 percent.

Li Kuiwen, Director of the GACC's Department of Statistics and Analysis, said although faced with the slowdown of global economic growth and international trade, the Chinese economy has continued an overall stable upward trend.

The fundamentals of China's economy, in that it is resilient and full of potential, have not changed either, he added.

Government policies aimed at stabilizing foreign trade and investment as well as improving the business environment have also laid a solid foundation for the steady growth of China's foreign trade, he said.

Zhuang Rui, deputy head of the Institute of International Economy at the University of International Business and Economics, called the trade reading a "hard-won" result amid sluggish trade growth around the globe.

In early June, the World Bank revised down its forecast for global trade growth in 2019 by a full percentage point to 2.6 percent, the weakest since the global financial crisis in 2008, citing growing trade tensions, among other factors.

The latest GACC data also showed China's trade with the European Union surged 11.7 percent year on year in the first five months, while trade with ASEAN was up 9.4 percent.

As cooperation between countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative continues to strengthen, China's trade with other participants increased 9 percent year on year during the period, with the pace of growth 4.9 percentage points higher than overall trade growth.

Benefiting from the prosperous cooperation under the initiative, bilateral trade volume between China and other Belt and Road participating countries accounted for 28.8 percent of China's total trade volume, up 1.3 percentage points from the same period last year, the GACC data showed.

China's private businesses reported faster trade growth in the first five months. Their trade volume increased 11.1 percent to 5.02 trillion yuan ($726 billion), accounting for 41.4 percent of the total trade volume during the period, up 2.6 percentage points year on year.

This article is based on a Xinhua News Agency report with added data

Copyedited by Madhusudan Chaubey

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