Yao Jian, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce of China, said on November 16 that the October statistics on foreign trade reflected three characters.

Above all, the decline in exports and imports further narrowed. The October imports recorded a 43.1% drop as compared with January 2009, falling at a single-digit rate for two consecutive months. Contrarily, general trade imports continued a two-month winning run.

Next, Chinese export credit insurers cranked up their efforts to accept insurance of export credit risk at a time when a lot of foreign companies fell behind in payment to Chinese exporters. During the January-October period, China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation underwrote USD 70.16 billion of short-term export credit insurance, up 108% year on year.

What is more, prices of commodities were swing to their cyclical lows. During the period, prices of crude oil, ironsand, plastic, copper products, steel products, and soy bean declined 46.6%, 44.9%, 28.5%, 36.4%, 26.4%, and 27.9%, respectively.