Source: WSJ
China’s Export Machine Notches New Record as Pandemic Grinds On
The world’s second-largest economy cemented its place as the world’s factory floor last year, even as relations with the West grew more tense
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Jan. 14, 2022 3:51 am ET
Police officers spraying disinfectant as an anti-Covid-19 measure at Nanjing port in China's eastern Jiangsu province last August.
Photo: str/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
HONG KONG—China’s export boom took the country’s trade surplus to a record in 2021, as its manufacturing prowess and surging global demand beat headwinds including rising geopolitical tensions with the Western world.
Shipments from the world’s second-largest economy last year were up 30% from a year earlier to $3.36 trillion, also a record, the country’s General Administration of Customs said Friday. The booming export sector has been a consistent strength of China’s economy, which has been hit by domestic pandemic controls and a government-induced property-sector slump.
Imports were also up 30%, in large part a reflection of surging prices of commodities such as coal, steel and iron ore.
The result was a trade surplus of $676 billion in 2021, easily beating the previous record of $535 billion, set the year before, and highlighting how Covid-19 disruptions have only reinforced pre-pandemic global trade imbalances.
China’s trade surplus with the U.S. in particular grew to $396.5 billion, from $316.9 billion in 2020, Chinese customs reported Friday—a widening that could stoke more grumbling in Washington. China’s purchases of U.S. goods, including energy and agricultural products,
fell well short of terms agreed to under the just-expired Phase One trade deal that the U.S. and China signed in January 2020, according to a study by the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.
China’s total goods trade—the sum of imports and exports—surged roughly 30% to a record high of $6.05 trillion last year, from $4.65 trillion the year before, China’s official data show.
The figures show that China has managed not only to maintain but to strengthen its central role in global goods trade, even as the U.S. and its allies warn Western companies about the potential perils of overreliance on China and alleged human-rights violations in supply chains running through the country.