Aerial photo taken on Dec. 5, 2021 shows the sunrise scenery of the Yangpu international container port at Yangpu economic development zone in south China's Hainan Province.(Xinhua/Pu Xiaoxu)
BEIJING, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) – A series of preferential policies to stabilize foreign trade have been introduced successively since the beginning of this year.
Some experts noted that China's proactive deployment and implementation of relative policies will stabilize expectations of foreign trade and consolidate confidence of all stakeholders.
On the whole, China's foreign trade is able to buck the trend to make a stable beginning this year. More policies may be issued on promoting the innovative development of foreign trade and the construction of foreign trade transformation and upgrading bases to ensure stable volume and better quality of foreign trade throughout the year.
-- Policy toolkits
After a "bumper harvest year" of foreign trade in 2021, the industry insiders are clearly aware that it would be more challenging to maintain the momentum of rapid growth this year.
On the one hand, the resurge of the COVID-19 pandemic has hindered the global economic recovery and the growth of trade in goods may slow down worldwide.
The latest WTO statistics show that the growth rate of global trade in goods will decline from 10.8 percent in 2021 to 4.7 percent this year. The unbalanced recovery leads to a rise of global systematic risks, and the quick withdrawal of stimulus policies of a few countries may result in shrinking demand and volatile price, which will in turn affect the export of relevant sectors in China.
On the other hand, in the context of accelerated restructuring, the disruption and bottleneck effect of global supply chain cannot be completely eliminated in the short term. China's foreign trade enterprises, especially those medium, small and micro-sized ones, will be confronting with surging composite cost and increasing operational risk and burden.
As pointed out by Ren Hongbin, vice minister of the Ministry of Commerce, China's foreign trade situation remains complex and challenging in 2022. As more unstable and volatile factors emerge, both the supply and the demand will be under huge pressure and need to overcome "a big gap".
Due to the unfavorable factors like huge base and withering demand, China will have to take more arduous efforts to stabilize foreign trade, said Liu Jianying, deputy director of the Institute of Foreign Trade with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce.
With such expectations, the governments rolled out policies intensively to keep foreign trade stable at the beginning of this year.
Immediately after the successive issuance of the opinions on further stabilizing foreign trade by cross-cyclical adjustment and on promoting the integrated development of domestic and foreign trade in January this year, China's State Council approved last week the establishment of cross-border e-commerce pilot zones in 27 cities and regions as the government seeks to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investments.
The Ministry of Commerce unveiled six major initiatives to support trade in services at the first regular press conference of the Chinese Year of the Tiger 2022. The National Development and Reform Commission clarified the next step of foreign trade will focus on "stability", centering around four aspects. The General Administration of Customs announced to further deepen the reform to streamline administration and delegate power, improve regulation and upgrade services, optimize the business environment at ports, provide enterprises with subsidiaries to recover production, and vitalize the market players of foreign trade with stronger internal driving force.
Various local governments have released policies and regulations to further stabilize foreign trade. Fujian Province released several measures on stabilizing foreign trade in the first quarter of this year.
Zhejiang Province released several opinions on supporting stable growth of foreign trade by finance to expand foreign trade financing service, deepen the burden relief action and optimize cross-border financial services.
Hainan Province published the implementation plan to stabilize foreign trade by further advancing facilitation of customs clearance and streamlining and standardizing port charges.
Shandong Province took the action for stability and better quality of foreign trade. Guangdong Province proposed ten major programs for high-quality development of foreign trade in 2022.
-- A stable start
Turning pressure into motivation and turning challenges into opportunities, China's foreign trade can still be expected to withstand the downward pressure and achieve a stable beginning driven by international trade demand and domestic policy toolkits, according to an industry insider.
With respect to the policy effect, an array of favorable policies to stabilize foreign trade effectively supported some of the foreign trade indicators. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the new export order index for China's manufacturing sector in January reported 48.4 percent, up 0.3 percentage points from the previous month and higher than the average level registered in the second half of 2021.
From the perspective of the economic fundamentals, good omens of economic recovery and credit stability have appeared. The purchasing managers' index (PMI) for China's manufacturing sector in January stood at 50.1 percent in January, staying in the expansion zone for three consecutive months; the renminbi loans increased by 3.98 trillion yuan and the incremental social financing registered 6.17 trillion yuan, both hitting record highs. Therefore, China's economy is expected to maintain a steady recovery.
China's import and export demand will be supported by the resuming resurrection of global manufacturing industry. The latest data from China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing show that the global PMI in January remained above 50 percent and stood at 54.7 percent.
Zhou Maohua, a macro-researcher of the financial market department of China Everbright Bank believed that due to the strong overseas demand plus better foreign structure and quality, China's import and export in the first quarter of this year will maintain the steady momentum.
The latest survey conducted by the Development Research Center of the State Council showed that China's foreign trade enterprises are able to maintain stable growth in capacity utilization, employment, capital turnover and order delivery in the rest of this year.
-- Forward-looking vision
While addressing the existing challenges to guarantee a stable beginning, the policymakers should be farsighted enough for quality improvement and upgrading of foreign trade with stronger international competitiveness.
The Ministry of Commerce has recently made it clear that 2022 will be a year of "foreign trade consolidation and upgrading".
Experts estimated that relevant authorities would issue more policies on promoting the innovative development of foreign trade and the construction of foreign trade transformation and upgrading bases.
For the innovative development of foreign trade, experts estimated that relevant authorities would focus on improving the trade digitalization, building a number of global trade digitalization frontrunner areas, and consolidating new advantages of foreign trade competition.
Zhu Caihua, professor at the Institute of International Economy of the University of International Business and Economics, suggested that China should make use of the development opportunity of digital trade to dig into the potential of trade digitalization and vigorously explore new business forms and models such as digital marketing, cross-border e-commerce and market procurement trade.
For advancing the construction of foreign trade transformation and upgrading bases, Bai Ming, deputy director of the International Market Research Department with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce, noted that China may further expand the coverage of the bases for foreign trade transformation and upgrading to support innovative development of processing trade.
To help the market expansion of foreign trade enterprises, experts suggested that China further highlights the role of export credit insurance, focusing on credit loan to foreign trade and strengthening enterprises' ability to deal with exchange rate risk, thus improving the level of global trade cooperation. (Edited by Yang Yifan with Xinhua Silk Road, yangyifan@xinhua.org)
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