General

On the 9th, the General Administration of Customs released the latest operation of China's foreign trade: in the first four months of this year, the total import and export value of goods trade was 13.32 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.8%. Among them, the international trade import and export value in April was 3.43 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.9%.

In the complex and severe external situation, the cumulative growth rate has decreased slightly from 0.8% year-on-year in the previous two months to 4.8% in the first quarter, and further accelerated by 1 percentage point compared to the first quarter in the first four months. The foreign trade under pressure has drawn an upward curve. Lv Daliang, Director of the Statistics and Analysis Department of the General Administration of Customs, stated that since the beginning of this year, China's economic development has shown a rebound and positive trend, and the economic operation has achieved a good start. The stable and positive trend of international trade imports and exports has further continued.

Automatic assembly, online monitoring, robot welding, intelligent warehousing... Entering the workshop of Xigemai Co., Ltd. located in Sanmen County, Zhejiang Province, the entire production process reflects the deep integration of informatization and industrialization. In the first four months, this automotive shock absorber manufacturing enterprise mainly targeting the high-end markets in Europe and America achieved a revenue of over 400 million yuan, maintaining a double-digit year-on-year growth rate.

The general manager of the company, Jiang Ruifeng, told reporters that despite facing constraints such as global economic downturn, insufficient external demand, and geopolitical risks, the company has focused on its main business and continuously received praise from overseas markets by launching new products through enhancing research and development capabilities. Currently, orders have been scheduled for September. The company will also increase its efforts to "go global" and plan to participate in exhibitions held in about 30 countries within the year, striving to expand its international "circle of friends" and cultivate new business growth points.

As the largest entity in China's foreign trade, private enterprises with high operational flexibility and strong market adaptability continue to maintain a good momentum. According to customs statistics, in the first four months, there were 415000 private enterprises with import and export performance in China, an increase of 8.9% year-on-year; The import and export of private enterprises reached 7.05 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.8%, accounting for over 50% of China's total foreign trade value. The monthly customs survey shows that the proportion of enterprises with increased international trade export orders has increased for four consecutive months.

The highlight of foreign trade operation is also reflected in the continuous optimization of export product structure, and the increasing trend of high value-added product exports remains unchanged. In the first four months, China's export of mechanical and electrical products reached 4.44 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.5%, accounting for 57.9% of the total export value. Among them, driven by the export of new energy vehicles, the export value of automobiles increased by 120.3%.

On September 9, 203 excavators produced by Shandong Lingong Engineering Machinery Co., Ltd. were lined up at the Qingdao Dagang wharf to be loaded after the customs clearance formalities were completed at the Qingdao Customs. In a few days, these vehicles will be shipped to Türkiye and other countries. This is the 47th batch of engineering vehicles exported to countries along the "the Belt and Road" by Qingdao Dagang Port this year.

With the steady progress of high-level opening up, the level of economic and trade cooperation between China and countries along the "the Belt and Road" has been continuously improved. In the first four months, China's total import and export growth rate to countries along the "the Belt and Road" was 10.2 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate, accounting for 34.6%. Among them, imports and exports to Kazakhstan and other five Central Asian countries, as well as Saudi Arabia and other West Asian and North African countries, increased by 37.4% and 9.6% respectively, partially offsetting the impact of weak demand in traditional markets.

Data shows that new changes such as lower than expected imports, slower monthly growth rate of foreign trade, and declining imports and exports to traditional trading partners such as the United States and Japan have become current challenges.

It must be noted that China's foreign trade situation is still complex and severe, "said Wang Shouwen, the international trade negotiator and deputy minister of the Ministry of Commerce, who previously stated that the uncertainty of foreign demand remains the biggest constraint.

Stable foreign trade is an important support for stable growth. The Political Bureau meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held at the end of April clearly stated that "attracting foreign investment should be given a more important position and stabilizing the basic situation of foreign trade and foreign investment".

The State Council issued the "Opinions on Promoting the Stability, Scale and Structure Optimization 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 actively promotes the resumption of offline exhibitions; Six departments including the General Administration of Customs have deployed a special action to promote cross-border trade facilitation in 17 cities in 2023, further optimizing the business environment at ports; Shanghai supports the expansion of diversified international markets for electromechanical and high-tech product enterprises; Guangzhou proposed to promote the Digital transformation of the whole process of the processing trade industry chain... On the basis of several rounds of policies and measures introduced earlier, a new round of combined boxing again released a positive signal of strengthening efforts to stabilize foreign trade.

Yang Guangpu, associate researcher of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said that while strengthening the publicity and interpretation of the latest policies and promoting their implementation, we should also encourage all regions to conduct in-depth research, introduce support measures according to local conditions, effectively solve the difficulties of enterprises, continue to encourage enterprises to actively explore overseas markets, further improve the efficiency of export tax rebate, and support enterprises to fully use policy tools such as credit insurance and trade credit, Continuously stimulating new driving forces for foreign trade growth.

To cope with difficulties and challenges, foreign trade entities should not only "huddle together to warm up", but also further improve their internal skills. Professor Zhuang Rui from the University of International Business and Economics believes that enterprises continuously enhance their risk resistance capabilities by improving product quality, strengthening technological innovation, and expanding trade channels, which helps to enhance their international competitiveness, provide important impetus for the high-quality development of international trade, and make multiple contributions to the recovery of the national economy towards a positive trend.