General

The customs data released by the General Administration of Customs on the 7th showed that in the first two months of this year, China's total import and export value of goods trade was 6.18 trillion yuan, down 0.8% year on year. Among them, exports reached 3.5 trillion yuan, an increase of 0.9%, and the scale reached a record high in the same period; Import was 2.68 trillion yuan, down 2.9%; The trade surplus was 810.32 billion yuan, an increase of 16.2%.

Lv Daliang, Director of the Statistics and Analysis Department of the General Administration of Customs, said that since this year, China's foreign trade has faced difficulties, overcome the impact of the weakening of foreign demand and the high base of last year, and achieved a stable start on the whole, and exports have achieved positive growth, and continue to play a supporting role in the national economy.

To be specific, since the beginning of the year, China's foreign trade import and export have mainly shown four characteristics:

First, the proportion of import and export in general trade increased. Customs data showed that in the first two months, China's import and export of general trade amounted to 4.01 trillion yuan, up 1.2% year on year, accounting for 64.9% of China's total foreign trade, up 1.3 percentage points from the same period last year.

Second, closer economic and trade exchanges with ASEAN. According to customs data, in the first two months, ASEAN continued to be China's largest trading partner, with the import and export scale reaching 951.93 billion yuan, up 9.6% year on year, accounting for 15.4% of China's total foreign trade. Over the same period, China's economic and trade cooperation with countries along the "the Belt and Road" continued to advance, with a total import and export of 2.12 trillion yuan, up 10.1% year on year, driving the overall growth of China's import and export by 3.1 percentage points; China's import and export to other RCEP member countries increased by 3.1% year-on-year.

Third, private enterprises continue to act as the "main force" of foreign trade. According to customs data, in the first two months, there were 339000 private enterprises with import and export performance, an increase of 4.8% year on year, with a total import and export of 3.16 trillion yuan, an increase of 5.3% year on year, accounting for 51.2% of China's total import and export value, 3 percentage points higher than the same period last year, which played a positive role in stabilizing the scale and optimizing the structure of foreign trade.

Fourth, the development potential of foreign trade in the central and western regions has been continuously released. According to customs data, in the first two months, the total imports and exports of the central and western regions were 1.19 trillion yuan, up 12.1% year on year, accounting for 2.2 percentage points to 19.2% of China's total imports and exports compared with the same period last year. It is noteworthy that during the same period, the export of automobiles in the central and western regions doubled year on year, and the export growth of mobile phones and agricultural products exceeded 20%.

At present, the risk of recession in the world economy is rising, the growth of foreign demand is significantly slowing, the international supply chain pattern is accelerating to restructure, and the foreign trade development environment is extremely severe. Speaking of the trend of foreign trade in the next stage, Lv Daliang said that after entering February, China's import and export overall trend has improved, especially in the late February, with a significant increase. The monitoring of relevant leading indicators shows that this good trend is expected to continue.