DING LEI, a purchasing manager at a chip-trading company in Shenzhen, is having a good year.
Among other kinds of semiconductors, his company is selling IGBTs,
a type of transistor used to regulate electrical power.
Customers include motorbike-makers in Spain, manufacturers in Romania and clients across South-East Asia.
His optimism about sales prospects is understandable.
In the first three months of 2026, China's exports of transistors jumped by 26% in dollar terms
compared with the same period of 2025.
This time last year, after Donald Trump introduced "liberation day" tariffs on friends and foes,
the levy on Chinese goods leapt for a time to 145%.
(After a ruling by America's Supreme Court in February,
tariffs have fallen back to 10% across the board, at least for now.)
Many assumed that China's trade would slump.
But by the end of 2025 it had defied all expectations.
China racked up a record $1.2trn trade surplus and its exports rose to $3.8trn.
In the first three months of 2026 exports continued their stellar streak,
increasing by 14.7% compared with the same period last year.
To understand China's standout performance, The Economist has scraped and analysed millions of lines of trade data,
each describing exports of a particular product to a specific country in an individual month.
Our findings help to explain how the country's exports stayed resilient
in the face of an escalating trade war.