China’s exports jump 36%: how much remains after stripping out yuan appreciation and doubled chip prices?

Executive summary

The General Administration of Customs of China (GACC) announced on 14 October that China’s September exports rose 36.3% from the same month last year, to around 447 billion dollars. Consensus estimates, the average of economists’ forecasts before the release, stood at 25.5%. Imports rose 31%, bringing the monthly trade surplus, the amount by which export value exceeds import value, to 133.5 billion dollars. The widely cited figure of 938.1 billion dollars is the cumulative surplus for the first nine months of the year, not September alone.

This report applies four filters to the headline figure to strip out growth that does not reflect real demand. The first removes the effect of yuan appreciation, leaving growth of 29.6% in Chinese currency terms. The second examines the base effect, where growth is inflated by comparison with a weak month in the previous year. It removes little of significance, because September 2025 exports had already grown 8.3%. The third examines chip prices. In the first eight months of the year, China exported only 4.1% more chips than in the same period last year, but their value almost doubled. After stripping out this price effect, growth of around 23% in yuan terms remains, according to EL7’s estimate. The fourth tests the hypothesis of trade diversion, meaning shipments through intermediary countries to avoid tariffs. It finds that the 39.6% surge in exports to the United States actually amounts to no more than a return to the September 2024 level.

The conclusion is that demand is real, but smaller than the headline suggests. The clearest evidence remaining after the four filters is car exports: volumes rose 51.2% over eight months, while domestic car sales in China fell 28% in September.