China still defines itself as a developing country
Ursula von der Leyen
Von der Leyen’s statement goes straight to the core contradiction in China’s positioning as a leader of the Global South. Under its narrative, China presents itself as a fellow Global South country that once endured colonial humiliation and poverty. It portrays itself as a model of development for other post-colonial states, a champion of South-South cooperation through platforms like BRICS, CIPS, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) or its latest addition, a dubious International Mediation Body. Ultimately, China claims is “the” counterweight to Western-dominated institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and G7
The reality is that China runs large and persistent trade surpluses with most of Global South countries: It exports far more than it imports from places like Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
It exports finished goods, while imports are mostly raw materials or low-value commodities. Many countries in Africa and parts of Asia have seen their local industries weakened by the flood of cheap Chinese goods followed by infrastructure projects under BRI that sometimes increased debt burdens and created dependency rather than partnership. The countries become customers, not partners.
For all the talk of mutual benefit, the numbers tell a different story. Over the past seven years, China’s trade surplus with Africa hasn’t just grown, it has multiplied sixteen times. That’s not partnership. That’s imbalance.
China uses Global South rhetoric to build diplomatic coalitions at the UN, FAO, or WTO among others but economically behaves like a powerhouse, extractive, mercantilist, and self-interested, not anymore a developing country. The narrative appeals to shared history and mutual respect, which resonates with many governments and populations. Yet China’s actual economic posture undermines long-term local industrial development in many partner countries. China’s Global South identity is politically strategic, not economically egalitarian. It has positioned itself as the voice of the South, while acting as a neo-mercantilist power. This contradiction is increasingly visible from a trade standpoint.
Throughout Xi’s entire mandate, China’s trade surplus with Morocco has consistently hovered around 75% of their total bilateral trade. This is not a fluke but a feature of China’s trade dynamics
China’s 2024 cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) trade data perfectly illustrates what “dual circulation” really means in practice: export aggressively, import only the essentials, and maximize the trade surplus. That’s the entire strategy, nothing more.
While officials continue to boast about the dual-circulation model, import numbers are sidelined. In reality, the export-to-import ratio via CBEC was an astonishing 4 to 1 last year. Platforms like SHEIN, TEMU, Jingdong, AliExpress and others collectively exported $278 billion worth of cheap consumer goods, generating a $206 billion surplus—more than 1% of China’s GDP.
So while China’s leadership champions “new productive forces,” the numbers suggest something more familiar: Cheap China is back.
One of us took this picture at Le Bourget Airport. It shows a Jingdong warehouse in Paris
Chances of the EU–China summit taking place in July are fading, with any potential meeting likely postponed to later in the year. EU officials’ remarks, wrapped in the usual formality, deference, and indirectness, can be translated into our own terms:
China’s noncommittal monologue continues, filled with platitudes and vagueness. Its goal seems to be securing a summit photo for rhetorical use, with no real progress to show.
China’s denial contradicts the facts, but it buys time, helps preserve legitimacy by avoiding any sign of weakness, and gives officials a Party line to cling to. Its propaganda can say one thing and the opposite in the same paragraph without flinching.
The drop in May pushed China’s renminbi down to sixth place in global payments, its lowest ranking in four years. At the same time, Beijing continues to promote its SWIFT alternative, the CIPS system, which saw several African and Asian state banks join in June.
The total volume processed by China’s CIPS in all of 2024 is equivalent to what SWIFT handles in just about five days.
Exports from Germany and Slovakia’s Bratislava hub are down 60% from their 2022 peak.
EU exports to China fell more than 10% year-on-year in the first four months of 2025, confirming a clear downward trajectory
With a 6% year-on-year decline from January to April 2025, EU exports to China excluding Germany are now also trending downward, signaling that the slowdown is no longer limited to Germany alone
German exports to China dropped 15% in the period Jan-Apr 2025 compared with last year
The ratio of value per unit of volume imported is exactly the same in April 2025 and April 2024 (€6.707/kg). It’s statistically weird, not impossible, but it raises valid questions. With such large volumes, price per kg tends to stabilize due to the law of large numbers but an exact match down to the third decimal (€0.001/kg) across two years? Curious! given the sheer scale and variety of EU imports from China, nearly 7 billion kilograms in April alone, the exact match in value-per-kilogram over two years is statistically remarkable
Recent high-frequency data suggest a frenzied front-loading of Chinese exports to the U.S., possibly tied to the current trade truce set to last through August. Exporters in China and importers in the U.S. may be rushing to move goods before potential new tariffs or policy changes take effect once the pause ends. Shipments related to Halloween and Christmas typically begin in June, with activity peaking around mid-August.
Shortly after the London meeting between the U.S. and China, Trump announced that China had agreed to supply magnets to U.S. companies. It seems he got China’s memo from May.
A recent article at Bellingcat caught our attention for highlighting the geolocation capabilities of LLMs, which could be a highly valuable tool from a trade perspective.
We ran our own test, asking a popular LLM we use to identify the location of several images, while explicitly instructing it not to use reverse image search or retrieve them from known internet sources.
The outcomes vary. The LLM instantly identified the Port of Gwadar in Pakistan, citing distinctive container cranes, the arid landscape, the mountain range across the bay, and local architecture as sufficient clues.
In contrast, photos taken on a random, empty avenue early on a Sunday morning—devoid of cars or recognizable landmarks and lined only with trees—made the task impossible for the LLM.
Conclusion for now seems to be that while models may improve at narrowing down possibilities, truly pinpointing a location without any distinguishing features will remain unreliable. If the scene is too generic, neither AI nor a human is likely to identify it with confidence. Anyhow, for trade, is a very useful tool and we can imagine several ways to use these capabilities
A new paper exhaustively explores domestic supply scenarios for lithium circa 2030. The forecast for China is 1,163 kt of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE). For the EU, it is 210 kt LCE — a ratio of more than 5 to 1.
EU output by location: Austria (4%), Czech Republic (13%), Finland (6%), France (16%),Germany (26%), Portugal (14%), and Spain (21%).
Source: Xia Qifan et al
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