Recently, the news that China’s US$2 trillion in trade surplus has disappeared sparked concerns all over social media platforms. The problem was first exposed by famous Chinese economic analyst, Lao Man. On 9 February, he posted on Chinese social media Weibo that during the three years of “Zero-COVID” policy from 2020 to 2022, China’s trade surplus would reach US$1.8977 trillion, which is almost the equivalent to the sum of surpluses over a decade from 2010 to 2019. Furthermore, the surplus in 2022 reached
