A loaded ship leaves a container terminal in Lianyungang, east China's Jiangsu Province, July 13, 2021.(Xinhua/Wang Jianmin)
BEIJING, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- Since the beginning of this year, China's foreign trade enterprises have encountered various difficulties and challenges in the face of COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, by accelerating its efforts to foster new advantages and create new growth engines in foreign trade, China bucked the trend and recorded foreign trade growth.
Data showed that China's total imports and exports in the first 11 months of this year reached 35.39 trillion yuan, exceeding the total annual amount of last year. Foreign trade has made increasingly significant contributions to China's and the world's economy.
It is expected that China's import and export structure of foreign trade for the whole year will be further improved, its high-quality development will be accelerated, the status of a major trading country will be more consolidated, and the goal of "keeping stable trade volume and improving its quality" can be successfully completed, said Shu Jueting, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), on December 16.
-- Stellar performance in 2021
In the face of COVID-19 outbreaks worldwide and complex and volatile international economic and trade environment, the MOC identified 2021 as the "year of innovative development of foreign trade". Innovative development has injected strong impetus into China's foreign trade this year.
Since the beginning of this year, the MOC joined hands with relative authorities and local governments to actively implement "three major plans" concerning quality imports and exports, integration of the trade industry and unimpeded trade, to facilitate innovative development of foreign trade and contribute to building a new development pattern, said Gao Feng, spokesman of the MOC recently.
According to customs statistics, China's total imports and exports in the first 11 months of this year amounted to 35.39 trillion yuan, up 22 percent year on year and 24 percent over the same period in 2019, exceeding the annual volume of last year.
Zhao Ping, vice president of the Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said that China's foreign trade bucked up and showed prominent increase in volume and quality. Since the beginning of this year, China's import and export trade in goods have maintained high-speed growth, representing a promising start for foreign trade in the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan period.
Zhao further noted that this year saw a rising trend in the quality and competence of China's foreign trade. The ratio of general trade keeps rising, the supply chain of foreign trade enterprises becomes much more responsive, and those enterprises are now better at securing new orders from the international market. Therefore, they can grab new opportunities against the backdrop of the recovering global economy and increasing external demand, bridge the global supply-demand gaps, and promptly increase internal growth drivers of foreign trade amid COVID-19 flare-ups.
-- Improving trade structure
In the context of continuous high-speed growth, China's foreign trade in recent years features the export growth of both mechanical and electrical products and labor-intensive products. The export of some products increased significantly.
In the first 11 months of this year, China exported mechanical and electrical products worth 11.55 trillion yuan, up 21.2 percent, accounting for 59 percent of total exports. In the same period, labor-intensive products worth 3.56 trillion yuan were exported, up 10.2 percent, accounting for 18.2 percent of total exports.
On the one hand, the increase in exported mechanical and electrical products with higher added-value reflects improved trade structure and increased export competitiveness of China; On the other hand, the export growth in labor-intensive products is partly due to the orders flowing back to China.
An official with the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Textiles said that this year saw a surge in overseas garment orders to the extent that no apparel factories were available for the orders of some products in some provinces and cities. One of the reasons is a large number of orders originally sent to Southeast Asia and India shifted back to China.
According to the official, the favorable momentum of increasing orders of the clothing industry would last until the end of this year or the first six months of next year.
In addition to commodity structure, further improvement was also made in the international and domestic layout and mode of China's foreign trade. Its imports and exports with major trading partners, such as ASEAN, the European Union and the United States, achieved sound growth, and Chinese private enterprises saw a faster growth and a larger proportion in imports and exports.
At a press conference on November 24, Ren Hongbin, Vice Minister of Commerce, said that developing countries and emerging economies accounted for 49.5 percent of China's exports from January to October. In addition, Chinese private enterprises accounted for 57.6 percent of exports, representing a more prominent leading role.
Statistics showed that since 2019, private enterprises have surpassed their foreign-invested counterparts and become China's largest foreign trade entities.
General trade, a way of trading that truly reflects a country's competitiveness in foreign trade, now accounts for over 50 percent of China's imports and exports and continues to grow in volume and ratio, which shows the increase of technologies and competitiveness in foreign trade products made in China in the global chain.
In the first 11 months of this year, China's imports and exports of general trade totaled 21.81 trillion yuan, or 61.6 percent of China's total foreign trade, an increase of 25.2 percent year on year, and 1.6 percentage points higher than the same period of last year. In addition, China's imports and exports through bonded transport reached 4.44 trillion yuan, up 28.5 percent.
According to Wei Jianguo, former Vice Minister of Commerce and Vice Chairman of China Center for International Economic Exchanges, China's foreign trade in recent years features the increase of the ratio of general trade exports from less than 50 percent to nearly half now. Processing trade, though declining, has been improving its quality. Cross-border e-commerce, a "dark horse" in China's foreign trade, has become an engine for its high-quality development.
Statistics showed that the scale of China's cross-border e-commerce has increased by nearly ten times in the past five years. It has promoted the transformation and upgrading of foreign trade and played an important role in stabilizing foreign trade, especially amid the pandemic.
In the first three quarters of this year, the imports and exports of China's cross-border e-commerce grew by 20.1 percent, while the procurement exports rose by 37.7 percent.
-- A big boon to revitalize global economy
An open China with stable and improved foreign trade will bring more benefits to the world. In the first ten months of this year, China's export of mechanical and electrical products, such as automobiles, mobile phones and computers, increased by 22.4 percent year on year, accounting for 58.9 percent of total exports.
Since July last year, China has seen double-digit growth in exports for 16 consecutive months.
The continuous shift to the higher end of the value chain has improved China's export competitiveness.
In the first six months of this year, China's share of exports in the international market grew by 0.9 percentage points to 14.6 percent, which means China's quality products constantly meet the needs of people from all countries for production and daily lives.
With a customer base of over 1.4 billion population and a middle-income group of more than 400 million people, China boasts a vast market with annual imported goods and services worth about 2.5 trillion U.S. dollars.
Statistics from the World Trade Organization showed that in the first six months of this year, China's share of imports in the international market rose by 0.7 percentage points year on year to 12 percent, contributing to 15 percent of the global import growth. It fully justifies that China's robust growth in foreign trade has provided a stable impetus to world economic recovery.
According to Wei, the foreign trade figures released in November have sent three clear messages. First, China's foreign trade growth has far exceeded market expectations. In recent years, the double-digit monthly increase in exports has shown overseas customers' recognition of Chinese products and the strong resilience of China's industrial chains.
Second, the global market's overall demands for Chinese products are rising. China's foreign trade this year does not show a high-to-low or even declining trend. It indicates that the figures for December or even next year will continue to rise.
The new COVID variant Omicron has halted or stagnated the global supply and industrial chains. It is estimated the stagnation in European countries and the United States will last until the first half of next year. The demand for Chinese products will grow steadily, and will be not possible to decline next year.
As to the last question, why did China's foreign trade develop better than expected? Some people doubt that why the new figures are so positive when the new export orders of the Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) decreased in the second and third quarters. Wei pointed out that the new orders are not the determinant of import and export data, and prices need to be taken into consideration. The export growth is in tandem with price rise. It is the case for both imports and exports.
Wei thus believed that with the enforcement of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) next year and the implementation of a series of favorable policies, China's foreign trade would remain robust and maintain double-digit growth in the next year. (Edited by Yang Yifan with Xinhua Silk Road, yangyifan@xinhua.org)
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