The momentum of steady progress continues! Xinhua News Agency, May 9, China's foreign trade imports and exports increased by 5.8% year-on-year in the first four months of this year. The General Administration of Customs announced today (9 May) that in the first four months, China's foreign trade imports and exports increased by 5.8% compared with the same period last year. According to customs statistics, in the first four months of this year, the total value of China's foreign trade imports and exports totaled 13.32 trillion yuan, an increase of 5.8 percent over the same period last year, of which exports totaled 7.67 trillion yuan, up 10.6 percent over the same period last year, while imports totaled 5.65 trillion yuan, up 0.02 percent over the same period last year. Customs statistics show that in the first four months of this year, China's imports and exports to countries along the "Belt and Road Initiative" route totaled 4.61 trillion yuan, an increase of 16 percent over the same period last year. Among them, imports and exports to Kazakhstan and other five Central Asian countries and to Saudi Arabia and other West Asian and North African countries increased by 37.4% and 9.6% respectively. In the same period, ASEAN continued to be China's largest trading partner, with imports and exports to ASEAN of 2.09 trillion yuan, an increase of 13.9 percent over the same period last year, accounting for 15.7 percent of China's total foreign trade value. Imports and exports to the European Union totaled 1.8 trillion yuan, an increase of 4.2 percent over the same period last year, an increase of 2.2 percentage points over the first quarter.