(Yicai Global) April 7 -- Beijing surpassed Shenzhen to become China's second-biggest city for foreign trade in the first two months of this year amid declining overseas demand.

From January to February, Shanghai remained No. 1 with its tally of CNY681.6 billion (USD99.1 billion) in imports and exports, up 0.7 percent from a year ago, according to customs data. Beijing ranked No. 2 as its foreign trade jumped 8.9 percent while Shenzhen came in third as its trade fell by 8.1 percent.

As usual, most of China's top 20 cities for foreign trade are eastern coastal cities. More than half of them sit in the developed regions of the Yangtze River Delta or the Pearl River Delta, and only two are located in western China (Chengdu and Chongqing) and one is in central China (Zhengzhou).

Beijing's rise was mainly led by state-owned enterprises and surges in exports of new energy products and imports of biomedicines, as the city’s total imports rose by 3.8 percent, and exports surged by 38.7 percent over the two months. SOEs increased their foreign trade by 16.3 percent to CNY439.3 billion while private companies recorded a 12.8 percent uptick to CNY51.7 billion (USD7.5 billion).

Suzhou kept its fourth spot while Ningbo changed places with Dongguan to rank fifth. Zhejiang province's Ningbo, known for its textile industry, recorded a 9.8 percent decline in foreign trade while Dongguan, a hub sometimes called as "the world's factory," logged a 21.2 percent slump.

Ningbo moved up on the list despite the decline in value, showing how foreign trade companies in the city grasped market opportunities amid a complicated external environment, Fu Xiao, head of the Ningbo Academy of Social Sciences of Zhejiang Province, told Yicai Global.

Ningbo has released policies in recent years to support local firms to export more to countries along China's Belt and Road Initiative, Russia, as well as Central and Eastern European countries, and achieved results by making good use of its port advantages, Fu added.

Ningbo has a slew of small and medium foreign trade companies with a large number of talents, Fei Jianming, division chief at the city's commerce bureau, said to Yicai Global. Local foreign trade firms contributed half of the city’s imports and exports, Fei added.

Moving down the list, the positions of Guangzhou, Xiamen, Qingdao, Tianjin, and Chengdu were the same from No. 7 to 11. However, Henan province's Zhengzhou climbed to 12th place from No. 18.

Zhengzhou's imports and exports jumped 18.2 percent year-over-year as exports surged by 35.4 percent and imports fell by 7 percent. Zhengzhou’s Xinzheng International Airport and China Railway Express have strong cross-border cargo capacity, which contributed a lot to the growth, Bai Ming, an expert at a research institute under the commerce ministry, told Yicai Global.

Zhengzhou, known for its "iPhone City" where contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology churns out Apple products, has been in the headlines since late last year due to production hindrances amid the Covid-19 pandemic. For Zhengzhou, the impact of capacity transfer risk and pressures arising from a shrinking market faced by Foxconn "is not significant yet given the current data," Bai added.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi