China’s foreign trade grew faster than expected in the first two months of this year, driven partly by electronics and increasing exports to emerging markets and Russia, with Beijing’s foreign minister touting “a new paradigm” in relations between the two countries.

China’s exports in January and February rose by 7.1 per cent compared with a year earlier, beating a Reuters poll of analysts that forecast an increase of 1.9 per cent. Imports jumped 3.5 per cent, compared with a 1.5 per cent estimate.

“A big driver of that export recovery has been basically the upswing of the global tech product cycle, basically electronics,” said Tao Wang, chief China economist at UBS. “We have seen that already, that cycle bottoming, in the latter part of last year.”