Foreign trade growth slows

Growth of China's foreign trade missed the 10-percent annual target set for last year by rising only 6.2 percent from 2011, customs statistics showed Thursday.

The country's exports and imports volume reached 3.87 trillion U.S. dollars last year, and growth rate slowed sharply from the 22.5-percent rise registered in the previous year, Zheng Yuesheng, General Administration of Customs spokesman said.

Exports rose 7.9 percent in 2012 from the previous year while imports increased 4.3 percent year on year, Zheng said at a press conference. Foreign trade surplus widened to 231.1 billion U.S. dollars last year, 48.1 percent more than the level recorded in 2011.

Zheng said 2012's trade performance came despite "a deepening debt crisis in the Eurozone, a sharply slowing world economic recovery, continuously sluggish demand on the global market and big downward pressure on the domestic economy."

In December alone, the value of Chinese exports gained 14.1 percent from one year earlier, up from November's unexpectedly-weak 2.9 percent rise. The value of imports rose 6 percent year on year last month, improving from November when there was no growth.

Trade with Europe, China's biggest trade partner, declined 3.7 percent year on year in 2012. Trade with the United States, which overtook Europe to be the biggest buyer of China's exports, expanded 8.5 percent from one year earlier.

Japan dropped to be China's fifth largest trade partner, from fourth. Trade between the two countries last year sank 3.9 percent from 2011 amid tensions after Japan's illegal "purchase" of the Diaoyu Islands.

China's exports may grow 8 percent in 2013 while imports may rise 7.8 percent, according to a report published by the State Information Center in December last year.

China's trade policies will become more open to boost its imports and exports in 2013, despite being set to miss the trade target for last year, according to a senior official at a top government think tank.