BEIJING - More Chinese products were the target of trade probes this year, partly due to rising trade protectionism, a commerce official said Monday.

Twenty-seven countries or regions had initiated 117 trade remedy investigations targeting Chinese products as of Dec 21, up 34.5 percent year on year, Wang Hejun, an official at the Ministry of Commerce, told a conference.

The investigations involved $13.98 billion in total, up 71.5 percent from a year earlier.

Wang partly attributed the increasing trade friction to rising trade protectionism amid a weak global economic recovery.

The fundamental way for Chinese companies to reduce trade friction is to move up the value chain and make products more competitive, he added.

China's trade volume for the first eleven months dropped 1.2 percent from a year earlier to 21.8 trillion yuan ($3.16 trillion), while the trade surplus shrank 5.8 percent to 3.1 trillion yuan.