China's foreign trade maintained stable growth in the first five months of the year as the trade structure continued to be optimized to meet the country's drive toward high-quality development, data showed.

From January to May, China exported 5.57 trillion yuan (about 775.8 billion U.S. dollars) worth of electromechanical products, a year-on-year increase of 9.5 percent and accounting for nearly 60 percent of the country's exports.

Among them, automotive exports reached 266.78 billion yuan (just over 37 billion U.S. dollars), marking an increase of 124.1 percent.
In the January-May period, imports and exports by private enterprises stood at 8.86 trillion yuan, accounting for 52.8 percent of China's foreign trade, which is 3.9 percentage points higher than that in the same period last year.

In the first five months, the share of general trade, which refers to the import or export of goods by enterprises in China with import-export rights, rose by 1.4 percentage points to 65.6 percent, with a total volume of 11 trillion yuan.

Central and western regions imported and exported goods valued at 3.06 trillion yuan in the January-May period, up 7.6 percent year on year and contributing 18.2 percent to the national total, which is 0.4 percentage points higher than that in the same period last year.
In particular, trade between China's central and western regions and countries along the Belt and Road registered a year-on-year growth of more than 30 percent during the period.

"The structure of China's foreign trade continues to be optimized. This conforms to the country's new development philosophy and the requirement for high-quality development. With increasing uncertainties in the global economy, continuously advancing the optimization and upgrading of foreign trade structure is beneficial for strengthening the resilience of China's foreign trade and cultivating and enhancing new advantages in foreign trade competition," said Sang Baichuan, dean of the Institute of International Economics at the University of International Business and Economics.