Curb your enthusiasm. One month does not make a trend and investors know as much. Hence the strong growth in China’s trade surplus led by a jump in exports in December barely budged the Hang Seng index yesterday.

After all, the 14 per cent growth in exports last month came off the back of very weak growth in November. And continued strong growth is not guaranteed. The purchasing managers’ index for export orders, a fair indicator of future performance, was flat in December when it slipped 2 basis points to 50. And that is in spite of a greater dependence on emerging markets such as southeast Asia, where exports to the region jumped by a fifth last year.

What is more, China’s economy is not as dependent on exports as it used to be. Economic output is still expected to reach almost 8 per cent for 2012 even though net exports have been a drag on growth for most of the year. For example, they reduced output by as much as one percentage point in the second quarter, while the economy still ran a trade surplus, compared with 4 percentage points of growth respectively from investment and consumption.