China's trade engine

The better-than-expected trade growth in January does not necessarily guarantee a strong sustained start in 2014, because the Lunar New Year, which fell at the end of January this year, makes the trade figures volatile at the start of each year.

But it does amount to a serious challenge to exaggerated pessimism, which not only prematurely takes for granted a slowdown of the world's second-largest economy, but also mistakes it for an imminent threat to the fragile global recovery.

The latest statistics show China's exports rose 10.6 percent year-on-year in January, more than double the 4.3-percent growth in December, while imports were up 10 percent.