China's exports continued to perform better than expected in July. The yoy growth of exports recorded 38.1% in July, vs market consensus of 33%. After seasonal adjustment, exports increased by 5.9% mom in July, suggesting the external demand remains strong from the US (35% yoy growth in July) and EU (38%). By product, low-end exports (textile, apparel, furniture, toy, etc.) maintained steady growth while exports of raw materials (coal, coke, fuel oil and steel) accelerated (or maintained a strong pace) due to the weakness of domestic prices. As for outlook, we expect export growth to come off to around 30% yoy in the rest of Q3 before falling to 20% in Q4. This deceleration largely reflects the base effect.

July import growth came in at 22.7% yoy, much lower than the consensus forecast of 30%, down from 52% yoy in H1 this year. The most visible deceleration is seen in raw materials imports. For example, crude oil import volume declined 3% yoy in July, vs. a 34%yoy increase in June. Iron ore import volume also declined 12% in July. These numbers provide further evidence of the on-going industrial production deceleration in China, caused by policy tightening in the real estate and infrastructure sectors, as well as mandatory production cuts in the heavy manufacturing industries (note that yesterday the government published the list of 2000 firms that are ordered to shutdown capacity by the end of September). Given the on-going trend of IP slowdown, we expect import growth to decelerate further to only 10% yoy in September.

We see two economic implications from this set of trade data. First, the stronger-than-expected export figures, together with the likely higher CPI figure (we expect it to be 3.5% yoy for July) to be reported tomorrow, should reduce the probability of macro policy relaxation in the near term. Second, the rise in the trade surplus (to USD28.7n in July from USD9bn monthly average in Jan-June) suggests that excessive liquidity will continue to pose the pressure for a hike in the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) in the coming 1-2 months.

• [Editor:editor]