China's foreign trade grew 6 percent year on year in the first 4 months of 2012. Exports reached close to 600 billion US dollars, up nearly 7 percent year on year. Imports reached 570 billion dollars, up just over 5 percent compared with the same period last year.
These figures show increasing pressure for policy makers to introduce more stimuli. Chinese outbound shipments continue to feel the pinch of weak demand from major partners like Europe, which is a very significant destination for Chinese exports. Analysts say the pressure for China's trade is still high.
Zheng Yuesheng, director of statistics, general admin of Customs of China, said, "Base on the statistics for the first 4 months of this year, foriegn trade is still under a lot of pressure. Our next step is to expand imports and improve import structure in order to reach our trade growth target."
Despite the weak numbers that have came out so far, some economists remain optimistic.