#Trade# | 📊 #Guangdong#'s foreign trade hits 6.49 trillion yuan in Jan–July 2026, up 20.5% YoY! 🇨🇳💪 Exports: 3.8T 📤 | Imports: 2.69T 📥 | Surplus: 1.11T Top partners: #ASEAN# (1.02T), #HongKong# (990B), #EU#, #US#, #Taiwan#. Tech leads growth: IC exports +58%, lithium batteries +40%, EVs +30%, 3D printers +120%! 🤖🔋 183K companies active (+34.7%), private firms drive 4.37T trade. AI demand fuels IC imports (+48.6%) and computer parts (+77.9%). #Economy# #Exports# #Imports# #TechExports# #EV# #LithiumBattery# #3DPrinting# #AI# #TradeGrowth# #ChinaEconomy#

✈️ High-tech #exports# through Ezhou Huahu International #Airport# reached $7.3 billion in H1, accounting for over 80% of total exports, with 3,300+ major firms in #OVC# supplying high-value cargo and fueling the airport economy with tech, talent, and capital. #OVCBiz# #OVCTransport#

Korea's memory exports surged again in August: - Tech exports accelerated to +6.5% in August, up from +3.3% in July. - Semiconductor exports alone accounting for all of the headline sequential increase. - Other tech exports rebounded to 4.6% helped by strong computer exports. *Source: Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources

China is seeing a historic boom in exports due to AI. China’s exports rose +25% YoY in August, their 3rd-largest monthly reading in at least 2 years. At the same time, imports surged +28%, pushing the monthly trade surplus to +$119 billion and the year-to-date surplus to +$806 billion. This puts China’s trade surplus on track for another annual record, following the $1.2 trillion seen in 2025. This all comes as high-tech exports contributed more than half of China’s export growth last month. Integrated-circuit shipments soared +130% YoY in August, while high-tech product exports jumped +57%. The AI boom is increasingly powering China’s export engine.

The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics, WSTS, sees the chip market almost doubling in 2026 and reaching $2.1 trillion in 2027. Memory is projected to take about 59% of that. This is not a classic silicon cycle. Korea’s semiconductor export prices jumped 173% year over year in July even as the shipment-inventory gap turned negative. That is the opposite of the usual four-year boom-bust pattern. The driver is the mix shift to HBM. High-bandwidth memory for AI servers uses two to three times the wafer area of commodity DRAM and sells at a steep premium. As more capacity moves to HBM, generic DRAM supply tightens and prices rise in a knock-on effect. Volume growth is slowing. Price and mix are doing the work. The macro cut runs both ways. Korea gets stronger capex and high-tech exports. The risk is chipflation that lifts costs for data centers, devices, and the broader digital economy. $MU

Chinese economic data released yesterday were weak on the surface. Retail sales growth was negative, and growth in fixed assets and property investment declined further in May. The cash-for-clunkers subsidy has been suspended, and car sales were down 16%. Car sales alone dragged down retail sales growth by 150bps. However, service spending rose strongly by 5.4% y/y. It suggests consumer spending is now more on services than on goods. The Chinese consumer no longer uses things but instead uses experiences to define themselves. These numbers are consistent with our field observations. Further, while retail sales growth declined, high-tech exports were up strongly, diverging from the traditional manufacturing sector (chart). As such, economic data paint a picture of a country’s economy undergoing restructuring, and the process is powering ahead. This change is what we have been waiting for and talking about for years. Too much attention has been drawn to headline numbers without looking under the hood. And thus a wrong conclusion was drawn by consensus. Time to look at Chinese data differently.