China’s shifting trade flows face challenges

Significance

Its first-half trade performance offers evidence of the country’s ability to adapt to abrupt changes in the international economic environment. As the world’s first ranking exporter and second ranking importer of goods, China exerts enormous influence on the status and trends of global merchandise trade in most products.

Impacts

• Positive global and emerging market growth will support China’s exports of technologically advanced goods.
• Chinese companies selling into emerging markets will become stronger.
• China will seek to expand and deepen trade partnerships with emerging economies, which are less constrained by geopolitical tensions.