A staff worker sells children's clothes via livestreaming in Zhili Town of Huzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, Feb. 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Xu Yu)
BEIJING, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- China's foreign trade has continued to grow at a rapid pace since the beginning of this year, with imports and exports, both in terms of volume and value, at record highs in the first three quarters of the year.
It is noted that some new business forms of foreign trade are enjoying strong momentum. Experts forecast that China's export volume will grow by more than 20 percent year on year, and surpass 5.6 trillion U.S. dollars for the year.
-- New business forms of foreign trade are thriving
"Our annual cross-border e-commerce sales are now around 100 million yuan and the annual growth rate has remained at 30 to 50 percent," said Huang Hudong, deputy director of Overseas Marketing of Jiangsu Yoau Electrical Appliance Co., Ltd, a local company in east China's Jiangsu Province that sells mobile air conditioners, dehumidifiers, air purifiers and heaters via cross-border e-commerce and its sales volume has risen dramatically since 2018.
The online-shopping in North America and Europe has been thriving since the COVID-19 epidemic, making new business forms such as cross-border e-commerce and overseas warehousing expand rapidly, which have become a new engine of growth for Chinese foreign trade enterprises.
Foreign trade enterprises in China, upon receiving orders from e-commerce giants such as Alibaba, Amazon, Made-in-China.com and other platforms, would first ship their goods to overseas warehouses to save warehousing costs and improve efficiency, resulting in booming overseas warehousing demand.
According to Baosen Suntop, a logistic operator based in Shenzhen of south China's Guangdong Province, in the face of rising sea freight rates this year, the company has established multiple overseas storage centers in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, the United States and other countries and regions to ease storage pressure and save costs. In the future, the company will continue to expand its overseas business layout.
Customs statistics show that China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports grew by 20.1 percent in the first three quarters of the year, and there were more than 2,000 overseas warehouses with a total area of over 16 million square meters.
Wang Yiming, vice chairman of China Center for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE) said that accelerating the development of new business forms and models of foreign trade such as cross-border e-commerce not only helps stabilize growth in foreign trade, and transform and upgrade traditional trade, it also expedites the formation of the new dual circulation development paradigm where domestic and foreign markets reinforce each other.
-- Government-enterprise cooperation to overcome bottlenecks
While new business forms have developed rapidly, traditional labor-intensive small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises are more cautious about accepting orders because of rocketing cost of raw materials and logistics.
According to the person in charge of a small clothing exporter in Wuxi, the company is also interested in online channels but the huge cost of investment constrains their progress.
The recent volatility in raw material prices, shipping rates and exchange rates has hit export enterprises.
Measures are also being taken at the national level to mitigate the cost pressure on enterprises.
The prices of commodities such as copper, aluminum and zinc remain high, and industrial enterprises are very much looking forward to stable supply and prices, according to Li Hui, deputy director of the Department of National Economy of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), adding that the NDRC will closely monitor the trends in prices, as well as changes in supply and demand, and will continue to release state reserves to ease the supply-demand imbalance, and ensure that prices return to a reasonable level.
-- Considerable annual foreign trade growth
Despite the pressure on profitability, overseas orders in the fields such as mechanical and electrical manufacturing have continued to grow. Statistics also show that in the first three quarters of the year, China realized a total of 9.15 trillion yuan of mechanical and electrical products exports, up 23 percent, while the exports of labor-intensive products grew by 9.5 percent.
"In the first three quarters, value-added in exports increased rapidly with the two-year average growth rate at 7.6 percent. In particular, the export value of the automobile industry increased significantly. Exports are underpinning the extraordinary recovery of industry," according to Yu Ze, dean of the Economics Department at the School of Economics, Renmin University of China.
Many experts predict a possible slowdown in foreign trade growth in the future but growth for the year will remain considerable. China's share of international market will further expand.
Li Kuiwen, spokesperson and director general of the Department of Statistics and Analysis of the General Administration of Customs, said that given the high base in foreign trade in 2020, the growth rate of foreign trade in Q4 may decline, but the overall positive trend remains unchanged, with rapid growth expected for the full year.
Liang Ming, researcher from the Foreign Trade Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, forecasts that annual imports and exports volume will exceed 5.6 trillion U.S. dollars for the whole year, and the share will be around 15 percent.
(Edited by Jiang Feifan with Xinhua Silk Road, 346129473@qq.com)
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