China's trade surplus falls more than 11% in H1

BEIJING, July 10 (Xinhua) -- China's trade surplus reached 99.03 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of this year, down 11.8 percent from the same period last year, the General Administration of Customs said on Thursday.

Exports increased 21.9 percent year-on-year to 666.6 billion U.S. dollars, while imports rose 30.6 percent to 567.57 billion U.S. dollars.

The total trade volume in the first six months stood at 1,234.17 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year rise of 25.7 percent.

Exports in June alone rose 17.6 percent from June last year to 121.53 billion U.S. dollars, while imports shot up 31 percent to 100.18 billion U.S. dollars.

The June export growth further slowed down from May by 10.5 percentage points, and the import growth was 9 percentage points lower.