Noting that China held eight national holidays in the first week of October, Macquarie analysts took in the country’s official import data along with separate export data to paint a clear picture of Chinese demand.

“The [Chinese] data for October was skewed somewhat by the October national holiday and it appears that there was some over-reporting of September trade data and under-reporting of October data and that the two months should be averaged out to get a more reliable indication of what happened,” Macquarie said in a commodities report.

“We say this because the apparent ‘collapse’ in some data in October when compared to September (for example in iron ore imports) cannot be found in the equivalent export data to China.

“A common theme in a lot of the trade data is a fall from stronger levels a few months earlier.

“Some commentators are wrong, suggesting that this reflects a ‘collapse’ in Chinese demand and/or an end to speculative over-stocking.”

The investment bank said this might be plausible for commodities such as nickel and copper but not with coal or iron ore.

Instead, Macquarie sees rising domestic production in China, especially for coking coal and iron ore, and notes that exporters in these commodities are shifting to other growing markets.

Accounting for anomalies in Chinese customs data reporting along with the October holidays, Macquarie came up with its own set of figures for the country’s imports in 2009.

The bank put Australian coking coal imports to the end of October at 18.73 million tonnes, compared to a mere 1.17Mt in the corresponding 2008 period.

Throwing pulverised coal injection coal into the mix, Macquarie estimates China imported a total of 30.29Mt of metallurgical coal in the 10-month period, a 997% increase year-on-year.

Australian iron ore imports reached 216.1Mt, up 39% year-on-year.

Brazilian iron ore imports hit an estimated 115.1Mt, 35.1% higher year-on-year.

Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan iron ore was totalled together, with Chinese imports calculated at 23.6Mt, up 110% year-on-year while South Africa had a 137% gain to 29.1Mt.

Macquarie said rising Chinese iron ore imports from the former Soviet Union followed the steelmaking collapse in those countries, but expected this to reverse as their steel production recovered.