Fears over China’s trade surplus misplaced as US, Europe also driving trend: analysts

The so-called China Shock 2.0 narrative is incomplete, analysts argued, as they noted that domestic macroeconomic forces in China and the West, particularly the United States, are at play in driving their growing external trade imbalance.

China’s full-year trade data for 2025, including figures on the trade surplus, will be released by Beijing’s General Administration of Customs on Wednesday morning.

He added that years of stimulus-fuelled demand in the US and a prolonged property downturn in China have reinforced the long-standing global pattern of Chinese production and American consumption, widening the goods trade imbalance.

By contrast, China’s services trade has long run a deficit, with Ministry of Commerce data showing a shortfall of 806.35 billion yuan (US$115.6 billion) in the first 11 months of last year.