New official international trade data from China has demonstrated a continued decline in the country's import and export performance.

The Asian superpower's poor recent momentum continued in November 2015, with exports falling by 6.8 per cent year on year to $197.2 billion (£130.29 billion). This represented a slight improvement on the preceding month, but worse than a recent poll of Bloomberg economists had forecast.

Imports, meanwhile, dropped 8.7 per cent to $143.1 billion, which was a less severe fall than expected, reflecting the impact of monetary easing policies implemented by the central government, as well as the slump in global commodity prices late last year.

It means Chinese exports have now declined every month this year, with the exception of a Chinese New Year-fuelled uptick in February, while imports have now dropped for 13 consecutive months.

Julian Evans-Pritchard of the research firm Capital Economics said: "Although disappointing exports data suggest that foreign demand remains subdued, a recovery in imports hints at a policy-driven pickup in domestic demand."

The Chinese government has been implementing monetary easing policies to help stimulate growth, cutting interest rates six times since November last year. However, the competitiveness of the Chinese manufacturing industry has been on the wane, due to currencies such as the euro and yen depreciating against the dollar in recent months.

These figures are likely to be of continued concern to economists and business leaders that rely on international trade, as the loss of momentum for the world's second-largest economy throughout 2015 has been holding back global growth throughout the year.

In order to combat this, the country is making efforts to rebalance its economic focus away from its past reliance on exports and fixed-asset investment towards a more consumer-driven economy, but this is taking time to implement.