The Ministry of Commerce on Friday released a forecast showing China's foreign trade would grow 15 percent this year to between 1.6 trillion and 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars.

    "We don't foresee fundamental changes over the second half to reverse the growing trend of foreign trade," said ministry spokesman Chong Quan.

    Foreign trade stood at 795.7 billion U.S. dollars over the first six months, up 23.4 percent on the first half of last year, with a trade surplus of 61.5 billion U.S. dollars.

    Experts believe this year will easily exceed last year's record surplus of 101.9 billion U.S. dollars, but Chong insisted the growth was "normal".

    "It's not enough to just look at the surplus figure," he said, adding the surplus to foreign trade ratio, or the trade imbalance ratio, was a more reasonable and commonly-used index of foreign trade.

    China's trade imbalance ratio was only 7.7 percent, below the international average of 10 percent. "It's way below that of some developed nations, such as Germany," he said.

    He attributed the surplus to brisk global demand for China-made products and the ongoing migration of industries from developed to developing nations.

    Foreign-invested export-oriented processing firms had generated total foreign trade of 465.3 billion U.S. dollars, up 25.8 percent over the same period last year, accounting for 58.5 percent of China's total.

    In comparison, state-owned companies posted 195.3 billion U.S. dollars in foreign trade, up 11.7 percent, while private firms' imports and exports rose 34.9 percent to 135.1 billion U.S. dollars.

    "The Chinese government wants to see a trade balance. We don't deliberately seek a rising surplus," he said.

    Due to the government's macro-economic adjustment of taxation policies, the growth rate of exports to June had slowed 7.4 percentage points to 25.2 percent, while that of imports rose 7.3 percentage points to 21.3 percent.

    The exports volume during the same period stood at 428.6 billion U.S. dollars, he noted.

    Imports from the European Union had risen 20.9 percent, 19.2 percentage points more than the same period last year, while imports from the United States rose 21.7 percent, 18.3 percentage points higher.

    Textile exports to the European Union and the United States, however, had slowed as exports rose to countries without quotas on China-made products, he said.