General

Some time ago, there were media reports that a large number of empty containers were piling up in the port, which further raised concerns about China's foreign trade situation. So what is the real situation?

"On March 20th, Yu Jianhua, Director of the General Administration of Customs, stated at the press conference of the National Security Office that we are also paying attention to the issue of empty containers.". There are reasons for the excessive release of new containers in the previous period, low domestic storage costs, and a large number of empty containers returning in the short term after the relief of the foreign epidemic, as well as seasonal regularity. A large number of empty containers are poised to be shipped in China's ports, reflecting to some extent that the international market is still optimistic about our export capacity in the next stage. According to the latest data from the General Administration of Customs, the volume of export containers has continued to grow since late February.

Director of the General Administration of Customs: The total value of exports in the previous two months reached a record high

Yu Jianhua introduced that the General Administration of Customs is closely monitoring the development of foreign trade since March, and the overall view is that the start has been stable and the trend is improving. In terms of scale, the total export value in the first two months hit a record high, increasing by 0.9%, better than expected. The total value of imports and exports exceeded 6 trillion yuan, which is the second time in history. The peak for the same period before the epidemic was less than 5 trillion yuan. In terms of composition, during the epidemic period, China took the lead in resuming work and production, and the export of epidemic prevention materials and "residential economy" products increased significantly, raising the foreign trade base.

It is estimated that if the "one-time factor" is excluded, the import and export growth in the first two months of this year will exceed 10%. From a trend perspective, based on weekly monitoring, China's foreign trade imports and exports have significantly stabilized since February, with a month-on-month growth of more than 15% in the last week of February compared to the previous week. From the perspective of neighboring countries, China's foreign trade performance is good compared to neighboring economies that have published data.

According to the data updated by the General Administration of Customs on March 18th, in US dollars, China's import and export volume in February exceeded 411.2 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 1.3%. China's import volume in February reached 19.7 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 4.2%, both ending the trend of four consecutive months of year-on-year growth and decline. Although exports fell 1.3% year-on-year in February to $214 billion, the growth rate is still negative, but the decline has been significantly narrowed compared to the past three months, with a decrease of 10.5% in January.

At the same time, Yu Jianhua added that foreign trade is indeed facing many difficulties and challenges, and the weakening of foreign demand is of the greatest concern. High global inflation and sluggish growth in major economies have continued to impact global trade. The World Trade Organization recently predicted that global trade in goods was weak in the first quarter of this year, with an expected annual growth of only 1%. In addition, some countries have strongly promoted "decoupling and chain breaking", geopolitical risks, and recent fluctuations in the financial markets of some Western countries have had an impact on the global trade environment, which are also external challenges to promoting stability and quality in China's foreign trade.

According to reports, in the first two months, more enterprises have entered the field of foreign trade in terms of business entities. The customs has newly registered 46000 foreign trade business entities, indicating that everyone's confidence is accumulating and recovering. In terms of orders, according to tracking monitoring, the proportion of enterprises with increased export orders has continuously increased. In terms of new kinetic energy, the total exports of electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar batteries increased by 60%, while the import and export of cross-border e-commerce increased by 15.8%. In terms of trade diversification, China's import and export to countries along the "the Belt and Road" increased by more than 10%, and its total import and export to other RCEP members increased by more than 3%.

According to a recent visit by a CCTV reporter, at Ningbo Beilun No.3 Container Terminal, the 3.74 km long coastline of the terminal is almost full of container ships, and the port bridge crane is busy loading and unloading goods.

According to port operation data, since March, the daily average container throughput of Ningbo Beilun No.3 Container Terminal has reached 31600 TEUs, an increase of 14.5% compared to the same period last year. This is also confirmed by the operating condition of the bridge crane at the wharf.

The reporter walked around the port and found that there were indeed many empty containers piled up. The dock staff told reporters that containers with four or more layers stacked together are basically empty. According to the port director, currently, the number of empty containers stored in the port is approximately 140000 standard containers.

The person in charge of the port said that at present, the number of empty containers stored in the port is an acceptable range value. What are the reasons for these empty boxes?

Wu Guangji, Deputy Manager of the Operation Department of Ningbo Beilun No.3 Container Terminal Co., Ltd.: On the one hand, the reason is the return of empty containers from foreign trade, and on the other hand, the newly added containers cause a large amount of return after the entire production cycle, including the use cycle.

According to public data, in 2021, with the booming container shipping market, more than 7 million standard containers were produced globally, nearly three times as many as in conventional years. Nowadays, the period of port congestion and "one box is hard to find" has passed, and the "one increase and one decrease" in container supply and demand has resulted in a large number of empty containers at this stage.

In addition, international shipping companies have also taken the initiative to dispatch empty containers to Chinese ports to respond to the growth of export scale at any time.

Experts from the International Trade and Economic Cooperation Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce said that although the number of empty containers at ports and container freight rates are some indicators for observing the development trend of foreign trade, they are not all indicators. Therefore, changes in these indicators should be viewed dialectically.

Gu Xueming, President of the Research Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, said that the accumulation of empty containers in ports is mainly due to the oversupply of total containers caused by "shortage of containers" and "shortage of containers" since 2021. It is the result of foreign trade enterprises' optimistic prospects for China's foreign trade recovery and active deployment. After the epidemic, container freight rates have repeatedly reached new highs, but now they have begun to decline with the normalization of the shipping market, which is also an inevitable result of the return of freight rates to normal. Therefore, these indicators (changes) do not mean that China's foreign trade scale will decline.