Liu compared February's deficit with the previous one, when China witnessed the first monthly trade deficit in six years in March last year. But the trade deficit was short lived as exports rebounded in April.

Wang Qing, chief economist for Greater China with Morgan Stanley, said the February trade conditions shoud be reviewed together with the January figure.

The GAC figures had shown that exports grew 21.3 percent in the two-month period, reflecting "stable growth" in foreign trade, he said.

Rising imports partly due to higher international commodity prices, including crude oil and iron ore, had also attributed to the deficit, said Li Jian, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, an affiliate of the Ministry of Commerce.

But more importantly, Li said, the deficit reflected a trend of declining trade surpluses, which was a result of China's foreign trade policy of "stabilizing exports, boosting imports while having a lower trade surplus."

"Overall, the country's imports growth is picking up while exports growth is slowing," he said.

China's trade surplus fell 6.4 percent year on year to 183.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, according to GAC figures.

Market observers said the sudden deficit was linked to a rising yuan, instabilities in external markets, and rising labor costs.

Tan Yalin, an expert at the China Institute for Financial Derivatives at Peking University, said the deficit could help reduce pressure for the yuan to appreciate, but it was not a positive sign for Chinese exporters.

The foreign markets are turning to other countries for manufacturing with the strengthening of the yuan, and China's exporters need to figure out how to maintain the competitive edge in future, she told Xinhua.

The Chinese currency renminbi (RMB), or the yuan, on Monday strengthened to an all-time high of 6.5651 per U.S. dollar. On Thursday, the central parity rate of yuan was set at 6.5713 per U.S. dollar.

The yuan has appreciated nearly 4 percent since June 19 last year when the People's Bank of China, the central bank, announced it would further reform the exchange rate formation mechanism to improve the yuan's flexibility.