‍‍More than half of China's total imports in 2017 came from elsewhere in Asia. European trade partners constituted 17.8 percent of the imports to China, while 9.5 percent came from North America, with a relatively small percentage of Chinese imports taken by Latin America, Oceania and Africa.

The Republic of Korea topped the list of China's main import partners in the last year, with goods worth 177.5 billion US dollars exported to China, making up 8.99 percent of the country's total imports. It was followed closely by Japan, with 165.7 billion US dollars.

The top three economies in terms of trade are China, the US and Germany. China acted as the world's second biggest importer of goods, only next to the US, and was in the meantime the largest exporter on a global scale, purchasing 716.6 billion US dollars more than the US in second place.

According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China's total trade volume went up by 14.2 percent last year, hitting a six-year high, and once again became the world's largest trading power.

China was the world's largest cargo trade country in terms of total imports and exports from 2013 to 2016. That year, it was overtaken by the US with a difference of 20.4 billion US dollars, but in 2017, it climbed back to the first place.

(The trade data for China exclude the separate customs territories of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.)

Read more: China's imports in numbers: Goods and services in the past decade