Chinese shares rose 2.7 percent Friday, driven by world stock market gains and expectations of economic recovery in the first quarter, analysts said.
China's exports dropped 17.1 percent in March from a year earlier to $90.29 billion, according to figures from the General Administration of Customs Friday. The decline slowed from the 25.7 percent year-on-year fall in February.
Imports grew by 14 percent month-on-month in March, pointing to improved foreign trade, according to Customs.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 2.7 percent, or 64.35 points to close at 2,444.23. The Shenzhen Component Index was up 3.49 percent, or 315.13 points to close at 9345.44.
Gains outnumbered losses by 899 to 18 in Shanghai and 763 to 20 in Shenzhen.
Combined turnover rose to 239.98 billion yuan ($35.14 billion) from 166.94 billion yuan the previous trading day.
The M2 figure -- a broad measure of money supply, which covers cash in circulation and all deposits -- was expected to rise 25 percent in March, which "suggested abundant liquidity," Guosen Securities analyst Lin Songli said.
"This is a big increase as the consumer price index for the same time is expected to fall and the gross domestic product in the first quarter may increase by only 6 percent," he said.
The banking sector led the gains Friday after China Merchant Bank (CMB) posted profit gains in 2008 Thursday in its unaudited annual report. Net profit rose from 15.24 billion yuan in 2007 to 21.08 billion yuan in 2008.
Share prices for the CMB rose 1.64 percent to close at 16.14 yuan, and those of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the largest lender by market value, rose 1.75 percent to 4.07 yuan and the Bank of Communications up 4.41 percent to 6.87 yuan.
The real estate sector rose as home sales in major cities have been increasing. "Share prices for real estate developers were supported by rising home sales," Lin said.
Gemdale Corp rose 3.97 percent to close at 11.25 yuan, and Poly Real Estate Group was up 3.27 percent to 22.75 yuan.
Reports on Friday that the government would allocate 9.3 percent of the 4-trillion-yuan stimulus package to support the energy sector drove up share prices of PetroChina by 1.68 percent to 11.48 yuan, and China Shenhua Energy, the biggest coal producer, by 4.59 percent to 22.81 yuan.
China's coal imports hit a record 5.72 million tons in March, up 37.4 percent from a year earlier, as suppliers exploited cheap shipping and the lack of an annual deal between China's big power firms and coal miners.
The data, published by China's General Administration of Customs, showed a fifth month of coal import increases. The previous peak was 5.67 million tons in February 2007.
"The surge in coal imports is mostly because prices in the international markets are cheaper. It's likely that both thermal coal and coking coal imports rose in March," said Henry Liu, an analyst at Macquarie Bank.
Exports in March jumped 58 percent from the previous month, to 2.27 million tons, bringing the total imports in the first three months of the year to 7.38 million tons, down 27.6 percent from a year earlier, the customs data also showed.
China's four State-owned exporters, including Shenhua, China Coal, Shanxi Coal Import & Export Group and Minmetals, have not reached agreement with Japanese utilities on the annual term price for the Japanese fiscal year 2009, which start on April 1.
China's march exports data shows that no matter what step the Chinese government are trying to take, the global crisis just continutes and far from its bottom.
China's exports fell for the fifth month in a row to $90.29 billion in March, down 17.1 percent from a year earlier, the General Administration of Customs said Friday.
Imports slumped 25.1 percent year-on-year last month to $71.73 billion, compared with a 24.1-percent decline in February.
Total import and export value was $162.02 billion last month, down 20.9 percent year-on-year.
Trade surplus rose to $18.56 billion, up 41.2 percent from a year earlier. This was compared with $4.84 billion in February.
March exports rose 32.8 percent from February while imports grew 14 percent month-on-month. This indicated a sign of improvement in the country's foreign trade, the customs agency said.
"The narrowing in decline offers some comfort," said Zhang Yansheng, director of the foreign economic research institution with the National Development and Reform Commission, but this was a result of the government's support policies instead of an improvement in external demand.
Last month, China raised the export rebate on 3,800 items, including textiles and garments, iron and steel, non-ferrous metals and petrochemicals. It was the sixth increase since last August when the government decided to raise refunds in an attempt to tackle slowing exports amid the global financial crisis.
The World Trade Organization has predicted a 9-percent decline in global trade this year, the sharpest drop since World War II.
China's top three trade partners -- the European Union, the United States and Japan -- have all entered recession, which would put pressure on foreign trade, analysts said.
Trade between China and the EU, the country's largest trade partner, totaled $26.45 billion last month, down 19.3 percent from a year earlier.
Trade with the United States fell 12.6 percent year on year to $22.65 billion. That with Japan, China's third largest trade partner, dropped 20.5 percent to $17.52 billion.
Shrinking external demand, the yuan's appreciation, trade protectionism and financing difficulties for small and medium-sized enterprises all bore negative impacts on the country's foreign trade, said Long Guoqiang, deputy director of research department of foreign economic relations at the Development Research Center of the State Council.
A practical target for China was to make sure its exports growth would not fall below the global average this year, Long said.
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