Preliminary statistics from China Customs show that from January to October 2021, China exported 29.332 million tons of various large-element fertilizers (including ammonium chloride, potassium nitrate and organic fertilizers for animals and plants, the same below), an increase of 25.7 percent over the same period last year; exports amounted to US $10.094 billion billion, an increase of 94.2 percent over the same period last year.

Among them, 3.219 million tons of fertilizer were exported in October, a year-on-year decrease of 5.2. Fertilizer exports amounted to US $1.361 billion in the month, up 65.1 per cent year-on-year.

On the import side, China imported a total of 7.81 million tons of various fertilizers from January to October 2021, a year-on-year decrease of 12.8 percent, and a cumulative import amount of US $2.263 billion billion, a year-on-year decrease of 7.8 percent.

Among them, 683000 tons of fertilizer were imported in October, a year-on-year decrease of 15.5; the import amount in that month was 0.239 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 22.8.

The National Development and Reform Commission and other departments have issued a series of domestic fertilizer supply and price stabilization measures, clearly pointing out that fertilizer production enterprises that enjoy energy use, raw material supply, environmental protection and independent emission reduction, and phosphogypsum storage priority treatment should give priority to ensuring domestic market supply. Since October 15, all major chemical fertilizer varieties except ammonium sulfate have been included in the export legal inspection catalogue.

In order to ensure domestic supply, China has reduced fertilizer exports in stages, leading to tight supply in some countries. Take vehicle urea as an example. South Korea intends to propose diplomatic consultations to China because it is temporarily unable to find an alternative source of import for vehicle urea. The "31052100" in China's export tariff includes not only agricultural urea, but also urea solution, solid vehicle urea, medicinal urea, feed-grade urea and other goods, and the Chinese Customs currently classifies all fertilizer-grade urea and non-fertilizer-grade urea (and solution) according to the tariff. South Korea domestic urea enterprises have been parking for many years, in recent years, agricultural urea, industrial urea and vehicle urea need to be imported. From January to September 2021, South Korea imported a total of 564000 tons of urea, of which 97.6 per cent came from China. Since China's phased reduction in fertilizer exports in October, the tight supply of urea for South Korea vehicles has begun to affect the normal operation of diesel vehicles. On November 5, the Blue House of the South Korea Presidential Palace launched a special working group to deal with the shortage of urea solution for vehicles, and plans to conduct diplomatic consultations with China and other urea-producing countries through a diplomatic response mechanism.

In early November, the ASEAN Secretariat announced that it had received the approval of 10 RCEP agreement countries, including South Korea and Australia, and the RCEP agreement in which China participated will enter into force on January 1, 2022. Under the background of the entry into force of RCEP and China's continuous maintenance of multilateral trade rules, China will resume the international supply of major fertilizer varieties after China's domestic fertilizer supply has achieved its phased goal.