A China-Europe freight train loaded with Chinese-brand vehicles waits for departure at the Harbin international container center station in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, on April 16, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhang Tao)
BEIJING, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- After recording 41.76 trillion yuan of gross imports and exports in 2023, foreign trade, one of the three key economic drivers in China, is heading for new development of higher quality amid accumulating new growth engines.
Up 0.2 percent year on year, the annual data pointed to stabilizing but quality-improving foreign trade performance in last year when global economic recovery and trade both remained lackluster, said industry experts.
As the economic growth momentum strengthens and related boosting policies ramp up, the three types of new star products in China's export trade, namely new energy vehicle (NEV), lithium battery and solar cell, emerging markets, new businesses and other new growth drivers are contributing more vitality to the high-quality development of foreign trade.
Statistics with the General Administration of Customs showed that China's exports valued 23.77 trillion yuan in 2023, up 0.6 percent year on year, which, as Wang Lingjun, vice minister of the Chinese customs authority said, was built on high base data and stood for not only a reasonable quantitative increase but also a stable share in global trade.
-- Steady share in global export market
Latest data with the World Trade Organization (WTO) forecast that China's exports were likely to maintain a relatively high level of 14 percent in global market in 2023.
Zhuang Rui, executive dean with the Institute of International Economy under the University of International Business and Economics depicted the annual foreign trade performance as "forging ahead amid challenges" and deemed it factually difficult to achieve such a positive growth and maintain a relatively high share in global export market.
Of greater difficulty is realizing the quantitative growth when constantly optimizing foreign trade structure last year, highlighted Zhuang.
By products structure, exports of the three types of new star products totaled 1.06 trillion yuan by value in 2023, marking the first time for the data to exceed one trillion yuan and up 29.9 percent notably.
By business forms, aggregate imports and exports through cross-border e-commerce grew 15.6 percent to 2.38 trillion yuan in 2023 and by entities, businesses engaged in actual foreign trade numbered about 645,000 ones, representing a new historical high.
By markets, China's trade with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner countries reached 19.47 trillion yuan, accounting for 46.6 percent of the gross annual imports and exports value, which rose 1.2 percentage points from comparable data in the year prior. In 2023, China's trade with Latin America and Africa expanded 6.8 percent and 7.1 percent respectively.
From these data, resilience and solid fundamentals can be discovered in foreign trade of last year, behind which were the new advantages accumulated thanks to China's efforts in supporting innovative foreign trade development and corporate exploration of international market, cultivation of new business forms and modes and sharpening of R&D capability in new products and new realms, according to Zhuang.
Against the slack external demand, China's relatively high share in global export market in 2023 manifested the competitiveness of export sector and industrial transformation is also shaping new growth engines for exports, showed a research report of Golden Credit Rating International Co., Ltd.
A personnel in charge of related business of Alibaba international station, the world's leading one-stop cross-border trade service platform, said currently, China's NEV exports are burgeoning and in related industrial chain and technologies, it is outrunning others despite being a late mover.
At Alibaba international station, electric passenger cars, golf carts, electric motors, and electric tricycles have been the new best selling merchandises and their sales growth still continues at present.
-- New growth engines as effective leverage to tackle uncertainty
New growth engines have been an effective vehicle to reduce economic uncertainties in China and become a priority for regulators to map out related policy incentives.
On the annual central economic work conference held at the end of 2023, revving up cultivation of new foreign trade drivers, enhancing the trade fundamentals and expanding immediate good trade, service trade, digital trade and exports through cross-border e-commerce were proposed.
Chinese regulators concerned have been actively working on related work and further optimizing customs clearance, taxation and foreign exchange policies to boost exports through cross-border e-commerce, supporting cross-border e-commerce pilot zones, industry organizations and businesses to take part in the Silk Road E-commerce- and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-related economic and trade cooperation, and advancing digitalization of trade and green trade.
The Ministry of Commerce (MOC) will continue to bolster implementation of various foreign trade-stabilizing policies and meanwhile study and reserve new policies for roll-out at an appropriate timing to facilitate costs reduction and efficiency improvement by foreign trade businesses, Li Xingqian, head of the Foreign Trade Department of the MOC told media previously.
Under such circumstances, foreign trade enterprises in China turned more confident towards the future. A recent survey by the customs authority showed that over three fourths of the importer and exporter respondents expected China's foreign trade to parallel with that of 2023 or grow further in 2024.
This year, exports of NEVs, lithium batteries and solar cells are likely to maintain relatively rapid growth and exports to emerging markets such as the BRI partner countries will further expand, says Golden Credit Rating International's research report, highlighting that all of these point to further optimization of the product and market structure of China's foreign trade.
In 2024 or a longer period, Zhuang believed that new growth engine cultivation under multiple aspects-pronged policies incentives, ongoing high-level opening-up and greater space for bilateral and multilateral economic and trade cooperation are anticipated to jointly pillar up the quantitative and quality improvement in China's foreign trade. (Edited by Duan Jing with Xinhua Silk Road, duanjing@xinhua.org)
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