The Chinese trade balance report is usually released on the first week of each month. The trade balance measures the difference in value between imported and exported goods and services over the reported period. A positive number indicates that more goods and services were exported than imported. Since the global economy is so dependent on Chinese imports and exports, this release is crucial to the markets. There are three major parts of the release, the total trade balance and then total imports and exports. As China reinvents its economy, these numbers are more important as imports into China continue to grow as customer purchases steadily grow. The Chinese domestic economy is growing faster as the government pushes internal project to help stimulate growth. China's trade balance has a great effect on the New Zealand and Australian dollars as well as industrial metals. With China's GDP slowing signficantly traders look closely at these numbers. Gross domestic product expanded an annual 7.3% in the third quarter, the slowest since the height of the global financial crisis in early 2009 and economists are broadly expecting there to have been further weakness at the end of the last year and in the year ahead as authorities face what they themselves openly describe as a new normal of slower and hopefully, more sustainable expansion.
Under the government's reform initiatives, the private sector currently generates more than 60% of the nation's economic output and more than 90% of new jobs each year. The world's second largest economy grew 7.4% in 2014, marking the weakest annual expansion in 24 years. Despite the slowdown, the private sector had stabilized employment as the country managed to create 13.22 million new jobs last year, beating the government's target of 10 million for the year. China's export sector has had a passable year, with demand from the wider world up modestly. Exports are forecast to grow 6.6% in December, up from 4.7% in November, according to the journal's survey. But China's imports have stumbled this year, with demand weak amid uncertainty over the strength of the economy and soft raw materials prices dragging down the value of China's purchases. The poll predicts inbound shipments will drop 7% in December, after a 6.7% fall the month before. That will keep China's gaping trade surplus wide open, the economists predict a $49.4 billion balance for the month.