China's foreign trade up 0.03% through to October

A US cargo ship docks at the Qingdao Port, Shandong province. [Photo by Yu Shaoyue/For China Daily]

China's total goods imports and exports edged up 0.03 percent year-on-year in the first ten months of this year to 34.32 trillion yuan ($4.71 trillion), customs data showed on Tuesday.

Exports increased 0.4 percent year-on-year during the January-October period to 19.55 trillion yuan while imports dipped 0.5 percent year-on-year to 14.77 trillion yuan, the General Administration of Customs said.

In October alone, total exports and imports rose 0.9 percent year-on-year and stood at 3.54 trillion yuan, with exports down 3.1 percent while imports up 6.4 percent, according to the GAC.

In the January-October period, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) remained China's largest trade partner. China's trade with ASEAN economies climbed 0.9 percent year-on-year to 5.23 trillion yuan, accounting for 15.2 percent of the country's total trade value, the GAC said.

In the first ten months, China's trade with the European Union fell 1.6 percent from a year earlier, and the country's trade with the United States declined 7.6 percent year-on-year, the data showed.

During the same period, China's trade with countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative amounted to 15.96 trillion yuan, which witnessed a year-on-year increase of 3.2 percent.

Private enterprises saw imports and exports jump 6.2 percent year-on-year to 18.24 trillion yuan in the January-October period. The trade value represented 53.1 percent of the country's total, up 3.1 percentage points from the same period last year, the GAC said.

China saw steady export growth of such mechanical and electrical products as data processing devices, cell phones and automobiles during this period, which rose 2.8 percent to 11.43 trillion yuan, accounting for 58.5 percent of the country's total exports. In particular, exports of automobiles totaled 582.4 billion yuan, up 88.5 percent year-on-year.