FRED DUFOUR | AFP | Getty Images
A Chinese hostess walks beside imported boxes of cigarettes at the duty free of Beijing Airport, on April 30, 2016
That brought a trade surplus of $52.05 billion, slightly below July's $52.31 billion, which was a seven-month high, and missing estimates for $58 billion.
The Australian dollar, considered a proxy for China's economy, edged up to $0.7683 against the greenback, from $0.7677 ahead of the data.
Mainland and Hong Kong equity markets were little changed.
Despite the encouraging data, sluggish global demand will still weigh on China's export and manufacturing outlook, economists at ANZ said in a note.
"The PMI indicated that new export orders in August continued to stay contractionary, albeit with a slight improvement. The latest U.S. ISM data also disappointed by a large margin," ANZ said.
Moreover, Thursday's data may be revealing a lag-effect, Sadiq Currimbhoy, global investment strategist at Maybank Kim Eng, told CNBC's Street Signs.
The property market, nearly 8 percent of the economy from a gross domestic product (GDP) perspective, has been growing but that hasn't translated to a sustained improvement in imports, he warned. "It's been a concentrated impact to certain parts of the consumer cyclical sector [such as auto-sales], we're concerned about that."
He expects to see better trade numbers over the next few months given the strength of the property market.
