The total value of China's foreign trade reached 13.32 trillion yuan in the first four months of this year, up 5.8% year on year and 1 percentage point faster than the 4.8% growth in the first quarter, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs on Tuesday. In particular, the monthly import and export of April reached 3.43 trillion yuan, up by 8.9%.
In the first four months of this year, China's exports reached 7.67 trillion yuan, up 10.6 percent year on year. Imports reached 5.65 trillion yuan, up 0.02%.
Bai Ming, a member of the Degree Committee of the Research Institute of China's Ministry of Commerce, said that in recent months, China's foreign trade has maintained a steady growth, and the growth rate still exceeds expectations, despite the overall slowing demand from the US, Europe and Japan. This shows that China's foreign trade is full of resilience.
In the first four months of this year, the import and export of general trade reached 8.72 trillion yuan, up 8.5% year on year, accounting for 65.4% of China's total foreign trade. Imports and exports of private enterprises reached 7.05 trillion yuan, up 15.8 percent year on year, accounting for more than half of China's total foreign trade.
The experts surveyed here generally believed that despite the adverse factors such as the downward pressure of the world economy and the sluggish demand of overseas markets, China's foreign trade has continued its momentum of steady improvement and its foreign trade structure has shown a trend of continuous optimization since the epidemic prevention and control took a steady turn.
In the first four months, China exported 4.44 trillion yuan of mechanical and electrical products, up 10.5 percent year on year, accounting for 57.9 percent of the total export value, according to the General Administration of Customs. Among them, driven by the export of new energy vehicles, automobile exports increased by 120.3% year on year.
In the first quarter of this year, the export of electric manned vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells increased by 66.9 percent year-on-year, driving up the overall export growth rate by 2 percentage points.
At the 133rd Canton Fair, a large number of new products, technologies and processes were displayed for the first time. High-end, intelligent, customized, branded and green low-carbon products are favored by buyers around the world, which highlights that Chinese manufacturing is moving towards the middle and high end of the global value chain and demonstrates the resilience and vitality of China's foreign trade.
Industry experts believe that such high-tech, high-added value products leading the green transformation have become a new export growth point, reflecting China's efforts to achieve effective qualitative improvement and reasonable growth in volume at the export level, and an important embodiment of high-quality development of foreign trade.
In recent years, China's import and export trade has been characterized by a huge volume of trade in goods, innovative development of trade in services, thriving new business forms, diversified market development, and gradual improvement of structure.
New forms and models of foreign trade, including cross-border e-commerce, bonded logistics, bonded maintenance, overseas warehouses and offshore trade, are an effective force in China's foreign trade development and an important trend in the development of international trade.
In the first four months of this year, China's imports and exports in the form of bonded logistics rose 15.4 percent, according to the General Administration of Customs. Exports grew by 23.4 percent and imports by 10.8 percent.
According to the Guidelines on Accelerating the Development of New forms and Models of Foreign Trade, China aims to rank among innovative countries in developing new forms and models of foreign trade by 2035. Bai Ming believes that the new business forms and models will gradually promote the development of foreign trade, which is expected to become a "booster" for the stable growth of foreign trade in the long run.
In the first four months, the value of China's imports and exports to ASEAN, Latin America, Africa and countries along the Belt and Road increased by 13.9 percent, 10.3 percent, 17.5 percent and 16 percent, respectively. Gao Yuning, deputy director of the Institute of International Development and Global Governance at the School of Public Administration of Tsinghua University, believes that under the background of positive economic and trade relations between policy support and traditional trading partners, the contribution of new markets along the "Belt and Road" has continued to expand.
In promoting stability and improving quality in foreign trade, China attaches equal importance to the expansion of new markets in addition to securing "old customers" and "old friends". An executive meeting of The State Council held in early April called for guiding enterprises to further explore markets in developing countries and ASEAN and other regional markets.
Boosting the confidence and vitality of foreign trade enterprises has always been the focus of China's policy to maintain a steady scale and improve the structure of foreign trade. Bai Ming pointed out that due to external factors, China's foreign trade is still facing great pressure this year, and we should implement a combination of policies to stabilize foreign trade and help enterprises stabilize orders and expand the market.
Recently, The General Office of the State Council of China issued the Opinions on Promoting Stable Scale and Excellent Structure of Foreign Trade, proposing to strengthen trade and promote market expansion, stabilize and expand the import and export scale of key products, increase fiscal and financial support, accelerate innovative development of foreign trade, and optimize the environment for foreign trade development.
"A series of combined policies to stabilize foreign trade are more systematic, comprehensive and comprehensive, which will play a better role in supporting the development of China's foreign trade and promote the stability and quality of foreign trade throughout the year." Gao Yuning said.