This photo taken on Feb. 17, 2023 shows robot arms working on a production line at a glass factory in Jiamusi, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. (Xinhua/Wang Jianwei)
BEIJING, June 21 (Xinhua) -- In recent years, electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells, known as the exports of the new "three major items", have become increasingly important in China’s foreign trade.
According to the monthly report released by the General Administration of Customs (GAC) on June 18, the cumulative export amounts of electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells in China reached 113.942 billion yuan, 183.613 billion yuan, and 152.189 billion yuan, respectively in the first five months of this year, an increase of 172.4 percent, 78.5 percent, and 23.6 percent year-on-year.
The overseas popularity of the new "three major items" has a profound impact on China’s exports and domestic economic patterns, said Hong Yong, a think-tank expert of China Digital Real Economies Integration Forum 50. On one hand, this indicates that China’s product is constantly improving in quality, gradually promoting technological content, and significantly enhancing in innovation capability, which is a manifestation of the continuous optimization of the export pattern. On the other hand, it will encourage domestic companies to actively expand into the international market, continuously enhance market competitiveness and advantages, and further promote China’s position in the global value chain to leap from the middle and back ends to the front end.
-- New driver for exports
In recent years, electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells have gradually replaced the position of clothing, furniture and household appliances in China’s foreign trade, and become new hot-sale export products and continuously improving the driving force for China’s overall export growth.
Data shows that the new "three major items" drove the overall growth of China’s exports by 1.7 percent in 2022, and the driving effect has further increased since the beginning of this year.
According to GAC data, China exported 156,718 electric vehicles, 305.82 million lithium batteries, and 477.86 million solar cells respectively in May, with year-on-year change of 107.3 percent, -7.2 percent and 39.4 percent, respectively. Although lithium batteries decreased in export, the amount of related products has shown a significant growth trend. GAC Data shows that the export of lithium batteries reached 37.65442 billion yuan in May, a year-on-year increase of 51.6 percent.
Experts said that the emergence of the new "three major items" in foreign trade was closely related to China’s continuous promotion of technological innovation to drive the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure. The transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry have helped relevant fields form scale advantages and become a new driving force for exports.
From the perspective of electric vehicles, Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said that China has formed a certain scale advantage in this field, which enabled the country to occupy a favorable position in international market competition. Firstly, China’s basic research and development in electric passenger cars was relatively solid, and components and core technologies, including on-board batteries, operating systems, etc., can be independently controlled. Secondly, thanks to the production cost advantage, China’s electric vehicles have absolute price competitiveness globally. In addition, due to considerations such as low-carbon and environmental protection, China has provided significant policy support for the field of electric vehicles, and created favorable space for its development to strengthen its international competitiveness.
From the perspective of lithium batteries, the proportion of the total export value of lithium batteries to China’s total export value was increasing year by year, from less than 0.7 percent in 2020 to nearly 1 percent in 2021, and rapidly increasing to nearly 1.5 percent in 2022.
In response, Shi Jiayan, an energy storage analyst at BloombergNEF, noted that overseas demand for lithium batteries continued to rise rapidly due to the car electrification and energy transformation needs. However, high demand cannot be met by overseas battery manufacturing capacity, and China has the vast majority of battery manufacturing capacity in the world. Therefore, China’s lithium battery exports continued to grow.
From the perspective of solar cells, Tan Youru, an energy storage analyst at BloombergNEF, believed that due to the good economic performance of photovoltaic power generation, as well as the stimulation of energy security issues and the policies on accelerated development of renewable energy, the overall demand for photovoltaic modules in overseas markets was strong. However, in consideration of the long construction cycle, production economy, and policy implementation and certainty, importing relevant components from China was a better choice.
-- Companies focus on quality improvement
Looking forward to the future, from the demand side, the further deepening of international recognition for energy conservation, environmental protection, sustainable development, and intelligence has formed sustained support for the demand for electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells. From the supply side, the international competitive advantage of related products will be consolidated in the continuous transformation and upgrading of the domestic manufacturing industry. In this context, the new "three major items" will continue to be popular and become an important part of China’s export trade.
Hong believed that with the increasing demand for energy conservation and environmental protection, as well as the support of national policies, China’s new "three major items" export will continue to expand. However, with the intensification of international market competition, the allocation of market share will become even more brutal, which puts forward higher requirements for domestic companies in terms of technological improvement, cost reduction, and market expansion.
Taking lithium battery companies as an example, Shi stated that for lithium battery manufacturers and their upstream and downstream companies, it was currently a good time to enter overseas markets, especially for overseas factory construction and production expansion. Opportunities for going abroad outweighed the challenges.
For this reason, Wang suggested that as more and more companies entered the field, they should avoid price wars within the industry.
According to Wang, relevant companies should constantly rely on innovation to create a technological “moat”, break through technological bottlenecks, and consolidate international competitiveness.
While pursuing growth in quantity, relevant companies should also focus on improving quality and exporting related product designs, services, technology, etc., so as to further enhance China’s position in the international industrial chain, Wang said. (Edited by Yang Yifan with Xinhua Silk Road, yangyifan@xinhua.org )
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