"""
According to Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist at Capital Economics in Singapore, the severe fall in exports largely reflected changes in the timing of the Lunar Year in China this year.
"In 2015, the holiday fell unusually late which meant that more of the pre-holiday rush to meet orders and less of the post holiday disruptions took place in February, causing exports to jump 48.9 percent year-on-year," he said.
"""
[1] http://www1.chineseshipping.com.cn/en/indices/scfinew.jsp
In New Zealand.
To make matters worse, import growth (-13.8%) was also lower than market expectations (-12%).
As mentioned below, this suggests contracting overseas demand for Chinese exports AND contracting domestic consumption. Which adds up to lower than expected Chinese economic production.
We'll probably see another Chinese stimulus package soon. Hopefully they manage to deploy it without exacerbating the capital mis-allocation and higher private debt that the previous one caused (mostly poured into residential real-estate construction and speculation).
"China to cut 1.8m jobs in coal and steel sectors" [1]
it does make one take notice
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/29/china-to-cut...
""China will face a more challenging situation in trade this year than 2015. Both imports and exports in February fell more than our expectations."
""China's exports declined the most since May 2009, suggesting that the overly strong CNY exchange rate has become an obstacle for the external sector"
""February's trade data is really poor and that will exert depreciation pressure on the yuan."
http://news.forexlive.com/!/china-export-collapse-in-january...