China imports rise for the first time in 2 years

China's economy is confident, but has not yet started to run: exports still falls in August, but at a lower rate than previously recorded while imports create the first recovery of two years now.

According to the numbers released by the General Administration of Customs in Beijing on Thursday, exports in August fell by 2.8% over the previous year, slowing the fall compared to -4.4% in July. The data also reveals higher than economists' expectations, which indicated a contraction of 4%.

Exports pace is also connected with the depreciation of the yuan, as the Chinese currency has lost about 7% of its value in July against the major world currencies. 

Imports unexpectedly rose 1.5%, for the first time in 2 years, after being collapsed by 12.5% in July. In fact, the recovery is largely motivated by a price rebound in commodity prices, especially energy, but also an increase in domestic consumption and investment helped the turnaround. The nation’s trade surplus narrowed to US$52.05 billion from July’s US$52.3 billion.

But economists said they still need more evidence to see whether such signs of stabilisation are sustainable and convincing enough to assure Beijing to put a hold on more stimulus measures to boost economic growth.

 “China’s August trade data beat market expectations on the uptick trend,” said Suan Teck Kin, a senior economist at UOB in Singapore. “We think the data indicated that the deterioration of trade may have reached the bottom, although we still need more evidence to conclude whether such improvement is solid enough to be sustainable.”