China's customs authority says trade with countries included in the "Belt and Road" initiative has grown considerably in the first half of this year. Bilateral trade between China and the region hit more than 3 trillion yuan over the past six months, comprising more than one fourth of China's total trade.

But trade with China's traditional big partners, like the EU and Japan, dropped in the January to June period. Partly due to the Greek debt crisis, trade with the EU was down 6.8 percent year-on-year. But the bloc remains China's largest trading partner, with bilateral trade between the two reaching 1.67 trillion yuan in the first six months of the year.

Bilateral trade with the US, China's second largest trading partner, hit 1.64 trillion yuan in the first half of the year, up 14 percent compared with the same period of last year. But China and Japan totaled just 832 billion yuan, down 10.6 percent year on year.

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