Trade & Exports

No new hard trade data arrived this cycle, so the standing judgment holds: China's goods surplus is confirmed in the balance of payments, the industrial machine keeps running hot in exactly the sectors Washington targets, and the export map keeps rotating toward ASEAN, Africa and Central Asia. The documents added this cycle are adjacent rather than central — an energy-cooperation meeting with Singapore, a cross-strait exchange event, and a US countervailing-duty review of Indian glycine — so this is a confirmation cycle, not a revision one.

The balance-of-payments confirmation remains the sharpest fact. SAFE recorded $1.5 trillion in cross-border receipts and payments by non-bank entities in August, a net inflow of $62.4 billion, up 4% month-on-month, with goods trade the leading net-inflow channel; the services deficit widened 6% on summer study-abroad and travel, foreign-invested firms' dividend and profit remittances fell 23% from a seasonal high, and two-way direct investment was broadly flat ¹. Onshore FX turnover stayed at $3.9 trillion with a $48.5 billion bank settlement surplus. The one soft spot is the corporate FX settlement ratio of 61.5%, 2.7 percentage points below the January-July average — exporters holding more earnings in foreign currency, a preference signal rather than a stress signal ¹.

The supply side that feeds the surplus is unchanged and full-country in scale. August industrial value added rose 5.2% year-on-year (5.3% for January-August), with equipment manufacturing up 12.1%, high-tech manufacturing up 16.7%, and computer, communications and electronics up 17.2% ^2,3. Lithium-ion battery output jumped 57.2%, industrial robots 34.6%, and new energy vehicles reached 1.647 million units, up 21.9%, even as autos overall fell 2.7%, steel dropped 5.5% and cement 11.7% ². Strategic sectors run hot while legacy heavy industry contracts — and that output must find foreign buyers.

Liaoning remains the cleanest measured proof that diversification produces numbers. January-August trade hit a same-period record of 527.4 billion yuan, up 5.1%, with exports up 13.4% to 303.58 billion; ASEAN stayed the top partner at 97.2 billion yuan, up 19.1%, the EU was second at 84.49 billion, up 8.5%, Latin America rose 14.5%, Africa 83.8% and the five Central Asian states 91% ⁴. Processing trade climbed 36.5% to 131.09 billion yuan, lifting its share 5.7 points to 24.9% — the integration Beijing wants and the exposure Washington can reach are the same channel.

Washington's remedy machinery kept grinding on cadence, not as a shock: a 15 September preliminary affirmative countervailing-duty determination on tin mill products from China, paired with a preliminary affirmative critical-circumstances finding that opens retroactive duties ⁵, and final results plus partial rescission of the 2023-2024 antidumping administrative review on steel racks the same day ⁶. USTR also opened its comment request on significant foreign trade barriers for the 2027 National Trade Estimate Report, the pipeline that historically feeds new Section 301 actions ⁷. The newest filing this cycle is instructive precisely because it is not about China: Commerce continued its countervailing-duty administrative review of glycine from India ⁸, evidence that the docket tracks supply-chain relocation rather than one origin. Beijing's own remedies mirror this — provisional cash-deposit measures on Japanese dichlorosilane from 8 September ⁹ and the pecan case against Mexico and the US extended to 25 March 2027 ¹⁰.

The genuinely new items point sideways. NEA Administrator Wang Hongzhi met Singapore's Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Trade and Industry Yan Xiaofang on 10 September on APEC energy cooperation, with Beijing offering its large-grid operating experience and Singapore seeking cooperation on power interconnection and joint research ¹¹ — a services-and-technology export channel, not a goods one. Separately, the Taiwan Affairs Office reported the 6th cross-strait exchange event in Urumqi on 11-12 September, where delegates visited a leading wind-power manufacturer ¹², framing cross-strait integration through green manufacturing. Neither moves the trade numbers; both show where Beijing wants the next export story told.