Symbolic imageJuly exports topped a million vehicles for a second month, with new-energy shipments up 145.5 percent, and electric models passed 60 percent of home sales; carmakers are now shifting output to Spain and South Africa to get behind trade barriers.
China is the world's largest exporter, and the shape of that trade, what it ships and in which currency it is paid, is a standing point of friction with the United States and Europe. Beijing has long pushed for a bigger role for the yuan in cross-border settlement, a field the dollar dominates.
New-energy vehicles took more than 60 percent of China's monthly car sales for the first time, Global Times reported on Wednesday. Chinese carmakers are at the same time shifting production to Spain and South Africa.
Chinese car sales fell 21.1 percent in July, the tenth monthly decline in a row, while exports jumped 88 percent from a year earlier.
HandelsblattNikkei AsiaSouth China Morning PostSouth China Morning Post
China's commerce ministry imposed anti-dumping duties of up to 54.3 percent, collected as deposits, on pecans from the United States and Mexico, and asked in Geneva on Monday to join Brazil's WTO consultations against US tariffs of up to 37.5 percent. More than 38 million dollars in tariff refunds from US Customs and Border Protection, plus accrued interest, have reached Chinese companies' accounts, the South China Morning Post reported.
Chinese carmakers reached fresh sales highs in western Europe even with EU tariffs in force, the Global Times reported on Monday. US outlets link the shift to the war's effect on fuel and to German brands' slide in China.
China's producer and consumer price inflation both slowed in July as the oil shock from the war on Iran eased. Weak home demand leaves exports as the growth engine.
Consumer prices rose 0.5 percent in July and factory-gate inflation eased to a three-month low, Reuters and Global Times reported on Sunday. Inflation cooled more than expected, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Chinese exports rose almost a quarter year on year in July, and chip exports nearly doubled between January and July, according to the Financial Times and Global Times. The New York Times reports that factories keep finding eager buyers abroad even as weak consumer spending and a prolonged property slump weigh on growth at home.
China's foreign trade expanded 17.3% in the first seven months of the year, and the Wall Street Journal describes a new export engine built on supplying factories abroad. Bloomberg reports that Chinese banks are expanding direct settlement to widen the yuan's role in global trade and finance.