China's import and export volume grows by 0.03% year-on-year in first 10 months

China's total import and export volume grew by 0.03 percent year-on-year, reaching 34.32 trillion yuan ($4.72 trillion) between January and October, as the country's foreign trade posts a stable recovery despite mounting external challenges.

Over the period, the country's exports grew by 0.4 percent year-on-year to hit 19.55 trillion yuan, while imports declined by 0.5 percent year-on-year to reach 14.77 trillion yuan, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs (GAC) on Tuesday.

In October alone, the country's foreign trade grew by 0.9 percent year-on-year to reach 3.54 trillion yuan, according to the GAC. Last month, the country's exports dropped by 3.1 percent year-on-year to 1.97 trillion yuan, and imports grew by 6.4 percent year-on-year to 1.57 trillion yuan.

In the first 10 months, the country's imports and exports via general trade stood at 22.26 trillion yuan, up 1.8 percent year-on-year. General trade accounted for 64.9 percent of the country's total, up 1.1 percentage points compared with the same period last year, showcasing a continuous improvement in foreign trade structure.

Between January and October, the ASEAN remained China's largest trading partner, followed by the EU and the US.

During the period, the bilateral trade between China and the ASEAN was up by 0.9 percent year-on-year to 5.23 trillion yuan. The trade between China and the EU went down 1.6 percent year-on-year to 4.59 trillion yuan, and China-US trade went down 7.6 percent year-on-year to 3.86 trillion yuan, according to the GAC.

It's worth noting that China's imports from the US grew by 0.2 percent year-on-year between January and October to reach 948.87 billion yuan, official data showed. Recently, a delegation of Chinese enterprises signed 11 agriculture purchase contracts with US exporters worth billions of dollars, one of the few mass signings since the US initiated a trade war against China in 2018.

China's private sector has maintained an upward trend in foreign trade. Customs data show that the import and export of private enterprises was 18.24 trillion yuan in the first 10 months of this year, an increase of 6.2%, accounting for 53.1 percent of China's total foreign trade value and an increase of 3.1 percentage points over the same period last year.