The National Bureau of Statistics of China recently reported that the Trade Balance stood at $116.35 billion in March, higher than the previous month's $78.17 billion and higher than expected, as the analysts expected it to be at $52.05 billion.
In yearly terms, exports went up by 30.6 percent, higher than February's 18.1 percent and over the analysts' expectations, who foresaw it to be at 35.5 percent. Imports went up by 38.1 percent, the higher figure in 4 years, higher than the previous month's 6.5 percent and considerably over the analysts' expectations, who expected it to rise to 23.3 percent.
Analysts believe that Chinese exports are being boosted by China's emergence from the pandemic and the fact that the world governments have been implementing stimulus measures.
However, this effect is expected to fade away as the vaccine rollout advances and other countries reopen their economies. Exports are expected to fall to 10 to 15 percent in April and could fall further in the second semester.
“These two factors (will) both fade away in the rest of this year as other countries reopen and consumers are able to spend more on services,” commented an analyst at Macquarie, “Therefore, I don’t think the current pace could sustain,” he added.
China was one of the few countries that managed to grow last year, as its GDP surged by 2.3 percent while the rest of the major economies decreased. This year, the economy is set to grow by 6 percent.
So far, 90,435 Covid-19 cases have been reported in China, as well as 4,636 deaths. Despite there have been efforts to boost the vaccination campaign, China still lags significantly compared to other countries. The government plans to vaccinate around 560 million people, about 40 percent of the population, by the end of June.
There has been a lot of controversy regarding the effectiveness of Chinese covid-19 vaccines. China's top disease control official recently said that the Chinese vaccines are not effective in terms of protecting against the virus and that may need to be mixed to boost their effectiveness. However, the Chinese government official backtracked his comments, claiming that he was misunderstood and that his claims were being taken out of context.
China has been supplying vaccines mainly to third-world countries, among them Turkey and Chile. At least 70 countries have either approved or acquired Chinese jabs, making China the most prominent country in terms of vaccine outreach.