MKS sports South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on June 26, 2024. China's foreign trade in the first five months of 2024 recorded a yearly increase of 6.3 percent amid the country's steady economic recovery. Photo: cnsphoto" />

Trucks shuttle back and forth in a container terminal in Wuzhou, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on June 26, 2024. China's foreign trade in the first half of the year recorded a yearly increase of 6.1 percent to reach21.17 trillion yuan, a record high amid the country's steady economic recovery. Photo: cnsphoto

Official data showed that China's exports of mechanical and electrical products, including cars, surged in the first half of 2024, and contributed to over half of China's total exports of goods, which analysts said underscored the nation's progress in high-end manufacturing and industrial transformation.

However, some Western media, such as Reuters, hyped that China's increase in exports, a year-on-year growth of 6.9 percent in the first half, suggested that "manufacturers are front-loading orders in anticipation of tariffs from a growing number of trade partners."

Concerning imports, foreign media reports continued to hype "the weakened consumption sector in China." Media including Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal specifically pointed out that China's imports in June dropped 0.6 percent year-on-year, pointing to "weak domestic demand."

When asked to comment on the Western media's attribution of the fall in June imports to weak domestic demand, Li Yong, a senior research fellow at the China Association of International Trade, said that such attribution is not scrupulous, and somewhat misleadingly generalized. What would the Western media say when China's imports in May increased by 5.2 percent and in Jan-May increased by 6.4 percent year-on-year? Why didn't Western media say it was the result of strong demand?

"The drop in June import is not an indication of weakening domestic demand," Li told the Global Times on Friday.

It is only seasonal, and one month's worth of data does not point to the weakening health of the economy. Even with the June drop, the total imports for the first half of the year registered an increase of 5.2 percent, Li noted. "Isn't it odd that Western media ignored that part of the trade performance and focused on interpreting the cause of June number missing expectations?"

Western media's reading on China's economic data is politically-driven and aims to satisfy the West's need to distort China's economic development and discredit China. Foreign media's interpretation of China's trade growth figures is unprofessional, unscientific, and biased, Li stressed.