China’s exports surge amid AI-driven demand

China’s exports surged by more than one-third in September, a boost to the world’s second-largest economy as it faces slowing growth.

Exports grew by 36.3 percent last month year-on-year to reach $447.18bn, accelerating from a 25 percent gain in August, government figures released on Wednesday show.

The leap marked the biggest monthly rise in exports since 2021, when China’s trade figures were skewed by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and stringent lockdowns.

Tech-related trade led the growth, with semiconductor exports surging more than 108 percent and shipments of automatic data processing machines jumping nearly 55 percent.

Imports increased 31 percent year-on-year, up from 28.2 percent in August, according to the figures from the General Administration of Customs.

“High-tech demand, supported by the global and domestic AI upcycle, remained the key driver, while China’s pricing and supply-chain competitiveness in other major export categories also helped sustain the momentum,” Taylor Wang, an economist at HSBC in Hong Kong, said in a note to clients.

China’s total exports in the first nine months of the year rose 21.3 percent to $3.37 trillion, while imports gained 27.5 percent to $2.43 trillion.

The gap between exports and imports in the first three quarters gave China a trade surplus of $938.1bn.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was China’s biggest export market by a wide margin, with exports rising more than 52 percent in September to $81.7bn.

Exports to the European Union rose 25.3 percent in September to $60.15bn, while shipments to the United States jumped 39.6 percent to $47.88bn.

After decades of relying on state-led investment and exports to power its economy, China is striving to find new avenues for growth amid a falling population, deflating property market, and weak domestic consumption, which contributes far less to gross domestic product (GDP) than in advanced economies.

China’s economy is expected to grow 4.5 percent in 2026, according to the International Monetary Fund’s latest growth outlook, which would be the slowest expansion since 1990, excluding the outlier years of the COVID pandemic.

“The strong export growth should keep China’s growth on track to achieve its growth target of 4.5-5 percent for 2026,” Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING, told Al Jazeera.

“Nonetheless, growth remains quite unbalanced, with domestic data quite soft in comparison,” Song said.

“It will be important to rebalance growth over the medium term if China is to achieve its longterm growth targets.”