South Africa's trade minister heads to China, seeking duty-free export access

That’s a big issue in South Africa at the moment. A letter by a South African reader to one of the media outlets there summaries it quiet good:

Government incompetence or bias towards China? - Trade decisions favour Chinese imports to the detriment of South Africans

TL;DR: Cheap Chinese goods like EVs or consumer products from Temu are floodin South African markets at the cost of domestic manufacturing and the loss of local jobs, but the government says this should be addressed by the industries concerned, not the government.

It is noteworthy that South Africa has been trading with China at a huge deficit. While bilateral trade has increased substantially from 2022 to 2024, Chinese imports into South Africa were around 22b billion US dollars annually while South African exports to China made up just around 12 billion US dollars annually (according to the Comtrade database).

South Africa’s trade deficit with China has also increased in the long term.