Xinhua All Media+| Breakthrough in Trade Scale Promotes Stability and Quality Improvement with Support - Perspective on China's Foreign Trade Import and Export Half Year Report Foreign Trade | Import and Export | China

On July 13th, China's semi annual foreign trade report was released. Faced with a complex and severe external environment, China's foreign trade imports and exports remained stable and improved in quality in the first half of this year, in line with expectations: a year-on-year growth of 2.1%, and the scale exceeded 20 trillion yuan for the first time in history during the same period.

Lu Daliang, Director of the Statistics and Analysis Department of the General Administration of Customs, stated that currently, the world economy is recovering weakly, global trade and investment are slowing down, and risks such as unilateralism, protectionism, and geopolitics are on the rise. However, China's foreign trade has withstood pressure, stabilized its scale, and improved its quality, resulting in overall stable development of foreign trade.

New Breakthrough - Foreign Trade Scale Reaches a New Historical High in the Same Period

20.1 trillion yuan - China's imports and exports maintained growth in the first half of the year, reaching a new high in scale.

"This is the first time in the same period of history and a milestone new breakthrough." Lv Daliang commented that in terms of increment, the total value of China's foreign trade import and export in the first half of the year increased by more than 400 billion yuan year-on-year, equivalent to the total value of China's exports of over 3 million cars in the whole year last year.

"This transcript is not easy," said Yang Guangpu, Director of the Research Office of the Macroeconomic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council. "This is to overcome unfavorable factors such as a significant decline in demand from major developed economies, ongoing geopolitical conflicts, and rising trade protectionism. It is also a new breakthrough made after the global retail enterprises accelerated their destocking after the epidemic, and the previous" one-time driving factors "such as epidemic prevention materials and" homestead economy "products subsided, demonstrating the growth momentum and development resilience of China's foreign trade under pressure.".

Price and quantity are the two major epigenetic factors that affect the scale of trade. Throughout the first half of the year, China's total foreign trade value has steadily improved, from 9.76 trillion yuan in the first quarter to 10.34 trillion yuan in the second quarter, both achieving positive growth year-on-year; In addition, import and export increased by 6% month on month in the second quarter, and increased by 1.2% month on month in May and June.

In addition to the continuous increase in trade volume, the increase in quantity has also made the growth of foreign trade scale more solid. According to calculations, in the first quarter, the quantity of imports and exports in China decreased compared to the same period last year. However, in the second quarter, the quantity of imports and exports increased by 5.9% year-on-year, while the quantity of exports increased by 2%.

"The increase in trade volume drives the growth of trade scale, which means that China's foreign trade import and export foundation is solid and it is a real growth," said Lv Daliang.

New highlights - stronger vitality, better structure, and convergence of kinetic energy

The first batch of 27 boxes of wild anchovy jerky imported from Kenya has entered the warehouse of the production base, and about 60 tons of dried fish are currently waiting for shipping by sea in Kenya. Liu Teyuan, Executive Vice General Manager of Jinzai Food Group Co., Ltd., has been quite busy lately. The company's leisure food has been exported to about 30 countries around the world, such as the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea. In the first half of this year, the company's import and export trade volume has steadily increased, with year-on-year growth exceeding 30%.

At the Pingjiang High tech Industrial Park in Yueyang City, Hunan Province, the laboratory staff of Jinzai Food Pingjiang Production Base opened the box and prepared to conduct moisture testing on wild anchovy products from Kenya. On June 29th, China's first imported Kenyan wild anchovy products were unveiled at the 3rd China Africa Economic and Trade Expo in Changsha, Hunan. Photo by Sun Ruibo, journalist from Xinhua News Agency

Recently, reporters have conducted research in various regions and found that with a series of policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade continuing to show their effects, foreign trade personnel are more motivated to expand the market, foreign trade enterprises are more eager to develop, and highlights of foreign trade imports and exports are frequent.

——The vitality of foreign trade is strengthening. In the first half of the year, there were 540000 foreign trade enterprises in China with import and export performance, an increase of 6.9% year-on-year. Among them, private enterprises with high operational flexibility and strong market adaptability are still the main force driving stable growth in foreign trade. In the first half of the year, the import and export growth rate was 6.8 percentage points higher than the overall, and the proportion of scale to the total import and export value increased to 52.7%, driving the overall growth by 4.4 percentage points.

——The foreign trade structure is more optimized. From the perspective of trade methods, in the first half of the year, the growth rate of general trade imports and exports with longer industrial chains and higher added value was faster than the overall growth rate, accounting for 1.2 percentage points of the total import and export value, reaching 65.5%; At the same time, the advantages and potential of cross-border e-commerce in "buying and selling globally" continue to be unleashed, with imports and exports reaching 1.1 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16%.

——The convergence of foreign trade momentum. In the first half of the year, China's import and export scale to ASEAN, Latin America, Africa, and Central Asia increased by 5.4%, 7%, 10.5%, and 35.6% year-on-year, respectively, all higher than the overall import and export growth rate of the same period; The import and export of the Free Trade Pilot Zone and Hainan Free Trade Port increased by 8.6% and 26.4% respectively. The total export of electric passenger vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar cells, known as the "new three types", increased by 61.6%, driving an overall export growth of 1.8 percentage points.

New challenges - instability, uncertainty, and numerous unpredictable factors

The World Trade Organization predicts that global trade in goods will grow by 1.7% this year, significantly lower than the average level of 2.6% in the past 12 years; The inflation levels in major developed economies are still relatively high, and continuous interest rate hikes have suppressed investment and consumer demand; In June, the Purchasing Managers Index of China's manufacturing industry continued to be in a contraction range, with the new export order index decreasing by 0.8 percentage points compared to the previous month, marking the fourth consecutive month of decline

Yang Guangpu stated that in the coming period, whether from the perspective of global economic demand or the process of adjusting the international economic and trade pattern, the pressure of capacity transfer and order transfer is difficult to eliminate in the short term, and there are still many unstable, uncertain, and unpredictable factors. China's foreign trade still faces significant pressure for stable growth.

On June 11, 2023, workers loaded goods ready for export in the import and export logistics park next to the Erenhot Port. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Peng Yuan

Lv Daliang said that the slowdown in trade is a common challenge faced by various economies, and the difficulties are more global. Compared with neighboring economies that have already released data, China's competitive advantage in foreign trade is stable and strengthened. "We have calculated based on the latest international data released by the WTO that in the first four months, China's export products' share of the international market has slightly increased, indicating that our foreign trade has shown stronger competitiveness."

The more unstable and uncertain the external environment is, the more determined it is to do one's own thing well. Since the beginning of this year, China's toolbox of policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade has continued to be enriched: the State Council has issued the "Opinions on Promoting Stable Scale and Optimal Structure of Foreign Trade", emphasizing the stability and expansion of the import and export scale of key products, and accelerating the innovative development of foreign trade; The Ministry of Commerce will increase support for foreign trade enterprises to participate in various overseas exhibitions and improve the comprehensive utilization rate of free trade agreements; The General Administration of Customs has launched 16 new measures to optimize the business environment, further stabilizing social expectations and boosting confidence in foreign trade development

Lv Daliang stated that China's economy has strong resilience, great potential, and abundant vitality, and the long-term positive fundamentals have not changed. With a sound industrial system and complete production capacity, foreign trade development has sufficient resilience and ample room for maneuver. At the same time, China insists on opening up to the outside world and actively promotes international economic and trade cooperation. With the continuous efforts of a series of policy measures, we have confidence, foundation, and conditions to achieve the goal of promoting stability and improving quality in imports and exports.