The foreign trade climate index of small and medium-sized exporters in the Pearl River Delta surpassed the satisfaction threshold for the first time this year in April, indicating a recovery in trade. The index, which reflects exporters’ confidence in shipping products overseas, was above the satisfaction threshold at 101.7 in April, according to the report by Shenzhen Onetouch Business Service Co, a subsidiary of alibaba.com. The company, which provides Chinese exporters with online services, including customs clearance, trade financing, foreign exchange and logistics, releases the trade report each month. New orders, real export cargo volume and the capacity utilization rate in the Delta region, one of the major manufacturing and trade bases in China, were on the upswing in April. But 2,000 small and medium-sized exporters surveyed in the Delta region reported an export value increase of only 0.87% year-on-year in April, indicating a weak recovery, according to the report. According to the Guangdong customs, the trade value of Guangdong, which accounts for about one-fourth of the country’s total trade, was down 18.7% year-on-year in April. To encourage Chinese suppliers to use the company’s online export services, Shenzhen Onetouch announced last week that it would pay manufacturers and suppliers up to CNY0.03 for every USD1 in value of export transactions handled through its service.

It is a “very arduous” task for China to meet the 7.5% trade growth target this year amid weak global demand and tougher international competition. The target can only be achieved if year-on-year trade growth exceeds 11.3% every month after May, Zhang Ji, Director of the Ministry of Commerce’s Foreign Trade Department, said. He added that shipments to emerging markets declined 7.2% in the first four months of this year, compared with double-digit growth in the same period of last year. Emerging markets took 88% of China’s exports last year. China also missed its trade growth target of 8% for 2013 and 10% in 2012. In the first four months, China’s exports declined 4.8% to CNY4.16 trillion and imports fell 1.2% to CNY3.94 trillion, according to the General Administration of Customs. In April, exports increased 0.9% from a year earlier and imports rose 0.8%. Zhang said the Ministry will implement detailed trade stimulation policies in the next two months, including speeding up export-tax rebates and expanding credits to importers and exporters.

China’s meat imports are predicted to skyrocket over 3,500% to USD150 billion by 2050 as consumption of chicken, pork and beef surges. The massive increase was forecast by the Australian government’s agricultural research arm, the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resources Economics and Sciences. “The shift from a rice to meat diet has already happened in China. Even small changes in the way China consumes can have a large impact overseas,” said Patrick Vizzone, Asia head of food and agribusiness at National Australia Bank. Between now and 2050, China would represent more than 40% of the increase in world food demand. If China switched just 2% of its pork consumption to imports, this would equal 10% of the U.S. market and three times Australia’s pork production, Vizzone said. For now, China produces nearly all of its own meat. Its output of pork, poultry, and beef rose from about 20 million tons in 1986 to more than 70 million tons in 2012, with the fastest growth from the 1980s into the early ’90s, a U.S. Department of Agriculture report said. The USDA was projecting an increase in China’s pork, poultry, and beef output to 90 million tons by 2023/24, an increase of about 30%. “Since about 3 kg of feed are needed to produce each kilogram of meat, feeding a large and increasing population of animals will be a growing challenge”, it said, with serious implications for the trading of grains such as corn and soya beans used to feed livestock. The USDA report said China’s soya bean imports were expected to reach over 70% of the global total by 2023/24, while China’s corn imports were projected to rise to 22 million tons by then. China is expected to account for 40% of the rise in the global corn trade over the coming decade, and the report said the USDA expected China to become the leading importer of corn by 2023/24, the South China Morning Post reports.

A crackdown on corruption and pricing in China’s fast growing pharmaceutical market has squeezed profits and margins. A Reuters’ analysis of more than 60 listed Chinese healthcare firms shows average profit margins declined to around 10% last year from 15% in 2012. Average net profits fell 2.1%, down from close to 20% growth in previous years. China is the largest emerging drugs market and is set to be the global number two overall within three years, according to consultancy IMS Health. “Most companies, local and foreign, have enjoyed an easy growth phase for 5 to 6 years as money was thrown at the healthcare system to improve access,” said Alexander Ng, Hong Kong-based Associate Principal at McKinsey & Co. “Now China is more into cost containment mode and the squeeze on pricing and margins is a lot more apparent.” Over the past year, China has cracked down on high prices and corruption in the healthcare sector. Executives of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) were charged with bribery earlier this month. Industry and legal sources said the investigations into the sector were likely to grow more intense, which is likely to lead to declining sales growth, with some doctors saying they are worried to meet pharmaceutical representatives. “Selling through bribing definitely won’t work anymore,” said a Shanghai-based Sales Executive at a global drugmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Reuters’ analysis showed combined revenue growth in the sector fell to 17.9% last year, from 22.6% in 2012 and more than 28.8% in 2011, the Shanghai Daily reports.

Zhou Zhiquan, President of Beijing Xintian Yinping Technology Co that operated the website siluhd.com, which offered movies and TV downloads for profit without the permission of copyright holders, was sentenced five years in jail and fined CNY1 million. Six other defendants were given jail sentences ranging from one to three years. It is considered China’s largest online copyright infringement case. The company had seven managers and 140 website administrators to maintain the service. Between January 2009 and April 2013, the seven put movies, TV shows and music on the website. Visitors could not directly find the download area on the site’s homepage, which mainly provided film-related news and introduced some HD audiovisual products that were legal and clean. But a link to bbs.siluhd that required registration and an invitation code led to hdstar.org, the domain actually offering pirated films and TV programs for download. The website offered some 19,000 unlicensed movies and TV series, more than 3,300 music albums and nearly 210 game software packages. It charged each member CNY50 a month for unlimited downloads. By last year, the website had more than 1.4 million registered members.