China becomes European Union's top trade partner

China became the European Union's main trade partner last year, with exports and imports both increasing despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Eurostat said on Monday.

The EU's statistical service said the bloc's imports from China rose by 5.6 percent year-on-year to 383.5 billion euros ($465 billion), with exports up 2.2 percent to 202.5 billion euros.

At the same time, trade in goods with the United States, which topped the EU's trade partners list until early last year, declined substantially in both directions.

The EU also witnessed a higher trade volume with the rest of the world in December, an increase of 6.6 billion euros from the same month in 2019 and the first year-on-year increase since the bloc was hit by the effects of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The single market saw exports of goods fall 9.4 percent year-on-year in 2020, with exports down 11.6 percent. With industries affected by COVID-19 containment measures last year, energy recorded by far the sharpest drop among all sectors, followed by food and drink, raw materials and chemicals.

China published official data in mid-January that showed trade with the EU grew by 5.3 percent to 4.49 trillion yuan ($696 billion) last year.

While China's total goods imports and exports expanded 1.9 percent year-on-year to a record high 32.16 trillion yuan in 2020, the surge in trade with the EU was more than double the average growth rate.

The positive result spoke fully for "the strong resilience and importance of China-EU economic and trade cooperation", Zhang Ming, head of the Chinese Mission to the EU, told a webinar last month with the European think tank Friends of Europe.

Xinhua