China's import rose sharply in the month of February to post a rare trade deficit, which is likely to recast worrying clouds over economic recovery of the second largest economy after the Asian giant posted an impressive trade figures in the month of January.

China's imports galloped 38.1 percent, while its exports fell by 1.3 percent from a year earlier in the last month of February. The humongous gap between import and export enforced a trade deficit of $9.2 billion, the first trade deficit that the country has posted in as many as three years.

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February's unflattering trade figures clearly proved most analyst's wrong, who had predicted imports and exports to decline by much fewer margins. The Reuters analyst poll, for instance, predicted 20 percent jump in imports and 12.3 percent rise in exports.

But most analysts have cautioned that February's trade figures may have been skewed because of the economic lull during the Lunar New Year holiday period when most businesses in China slow down, and several firms scale back their operations.

"Exports missed estimates mostly because trade is generally very volatile in the first two months due to the Chinese New Year factor," said Wen Bin, a researcher at China Minsheng Banking Corp. But he described the drastic import surge as a sign of economic recovery and also increase in commodity prices.    

Earlier this week, the Chinese government set a modest growth target of 6.5 percent for the Chinese economy in 2017. The modest target was a tacit acknowledgment by China that its economy will not fully recover by the end of this year.

This comes despite the fact that several recent economic indicators looked very promising, including January's trade figures that rebounded to beat most analysts' expectations and eight consecutive expansions recorded by the country's manufacturing sector in February.  

Tagschina, China Trade, china export, Chinese Economy