John Cridland, the Confederation of British Industry director-general, said: "With many British businesses looking further afield at new export markets, this deal is good news.
It's certainly not good news for George Osborne's hopes of stoking a new export boom.
"Wen said that judging from the new export indexes, China's export outlook will continue to be clouded by difficulties and uncertainties," the news agency reported.
"Yet despite the newfound caution, there is positive news regarding exports and continued anticipated growth in production and sales".
But it should not have; he was, after all, its penny-pinching head of operations for many years before taking on the top job.Now comes the astonishing news that exports of iPads may, just possibly, be halted from China.
Even that may be optimistic; several private-sector economists' forecasts go as low as 1%.Next year may bring better news, as exports at last pick up again, helped by the weaker euro.
Russia's promise to increase output by 7% this year and news that exports from Iraq were unaffected by troubles in the south of the country helped to ease concerns.
For the most part however, when you look at the capital expenditure figures, you just want to hold your nose and hope better news from exports and other areas of the economy will soon flush the smell away.
The good news: vehicle exports came to $5.1 billion, up 6percentt from the first five months of 2000, and were forecast at $6.26 billion for the first six months, an increase of 6.9percentt from the first half of last year.
In more bad news, both exports and imports in Germany fell in May, indicating a slowdown in economic activity.
