General

Recently, the foreign trade import and export data from January to August 2022 was released.

Facing the impact of unexpected factors such as the epidemic and the downward pressure on the economy, under the background of "intensifying efforts to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment, and consolidating the responsibilities of major foreign trade and foreign investment provinces", Zhejiang, Shandong, Fujian, Guangdong and other major foreign trade provinces have achieved "achievements in import and export". "Single" is remarkable, and it really provokes the backbone of stable growth. Among them, Shandong has once again become the "dark horse of foreign trade", attracting attention.

Import and export data show that in the first eight months of this year, the total import and export value of goods trade in Shandong Province was 2.18 trillion yuan, ranking sixth in the country, an increase of 18.2% over the same period last year, 8.1 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of national foreign trade. Among them, exports were 1.32 trillion yuan, an increase of 25.3%; imports were 855.27 billion yuan, an increase of 8.7%. The growth rate of import and export ranks third among the top 10 provinces and cities in the country's foreign trade, and the growth rate of export and import ranks first and third respectively.

The Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions have always been the main battlefields of China's foreign trade. Now, Shandong's foreign trade growth has gradually emerged and has become a "dark horse". What is the reason behind it?

The foreign trade data has reached a new high for 6 consecutive years! In fact, this is not the first time Shandong has won the first place in the country.

According to import and export data, the total import and export of goods in Shandong Province in 2021 is 2,930.41 billion yuan, an increase of 32.4% over the previous year, and an average increase of 19.6% in the two years, accounting for 7.5% of the country's total foreign trade import and export value, the sixth consecutive year. hit a new high. Among them, the export scale surpassed Shanghai for the first time, ranking fourth in the country; the import exceeded one trillion for the first time. Among the top 6 major foreign trade provinces and cities in the country, Shandong's import and export growth rate ranked first, and the import growth rate ranked third. .

In 2021, Shandong will be named and praised by the General Office of the State Council as "a place that promotes the steady growth of foreign trade and foreign investment, and actively optimizes the business environment."

From January to August 2022, the import and export data of Shandong Foreign Trade continued this "dark horse" temperament. From January to August, in terms of the growth rate of the total import and export value of each city in Shandong, the growth rate of 13 regions exceeded 10%, and the growth rate of nine regions exceeded the provincial average growth rate of 18.2%. Among them, Zaozhuang’s growth rate was as high as 125.7%, ranking first; Weifang’s growth rate was 45.0%, and Tai’an’s growth rate was 36.6%, ranking second and third respectively.

In terms of total import and export value, in the first eight months, the total import and export value of seven cities in Shandong Province exceeded 100 billion yuan. Among them, Qingdao's total import and export value reached 590.3 billion yuan, ranking first in the province; Yantai and Weifang ranked second and third, with a total import and export value of 304.34 billion yuan and 230.01 billion yuan; Dongying was 180.51 billion yuan. Yuan ranked fourth; the provincial capital Jinan ranked fifth with 147.08 billion yuan; Weihai ranked sixth with 142.90 billion yuan; Linyi ranked seventh with 100.81 billion yuan.

Overall, Shandong's trade surplus from January to August was 468.56 billion yuan, ranking fourth in the country and first in the northern region. In particular, the export performance of Shandong cities is strong. For example, from January to August, the export value of mechanical and electrical products in Shandong reached 553.10 billion yuan, accounting for 41.8% of the total export value of Shandong Province in the same period; other exports such as agricultural products, high-tech products, and cultural products were 900 yuan. billion or so.

It can be seen that, as one of the troikas, exports have an obvious driving effect on Shandong's economic growth.

Recently, at the factory of Zhongtong Bus Co., Ltd. in Liaocheng, Shandong, more than 40 new energy buses are leaving in a concentrated manner, ready to be transported to Chile in South America through the port. At present, the new energy buses of Zhongtong Bus have been exported to Chile, Bulgaria, Singapore, Portugal and other countries. According to Tang Xuexia, director of Zhongtong Bus's overseas marketing company, as of the end of August this year, Zhongtong Bus's sales of new energy buses reached 240 million yuan, a five-fold increase over the same period last year.

This is a microcosm of the export growth of Shandong enterprises.

In Shandong, there are 61,000 enterprises with import and export performance, especially private enterprises have become the main force of Shandong's foreign trade development. According to import and export data, in the first eight months of 2022, the total import and export value of private enterprises in Shandong Province was 1.6 trillion yuan, an increase of 23.8%, accounting for 73.5% of the province's total import and export value, an increase of 3.3 percentage points over the same period last year. The total import and export value of foreign-invested enterprises and state-owned enterprises was 389.6 billion yuan and 187.07 billion yuan, an increase of 2% and 13.6% respectively.

RCEP dividends are starting to show

Behind the performance of Shandong's foreign trade growth rate from January to August, it is not unrelated to the appearance of RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) dividends.

On January 1, 2022, RCEP, the world's most populous free trade agreement with the largest economic and trade scale and the most potential for development, came into effect. One of the highlights of RCEP is the establishment of a free trade agreement between China, Japan, Japan and South Korea for the first time. This is undoubtedly a once-in-a-lifetime historical opportunity for Shandong.

ASEAN is Shandong's largest trading partner, Japan and South Korea are the international markets that Shandong companies have deeply cultivated, and Shandong is also a major area for Japanese and Korean companies to invest in China. Therefore, the opening and development opportunities brought by the RCEP into force for Shandong are closer, wider and deeper.

In 2021, before the official entry into force of RCEP, Shandong’s imports and exports to RCEP member countries had reached 1.03 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.9%, 0.5 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of foreign trade, accounting for 35.2% of the province’s total foreign trade import and export value.

Shandong also seized this opportunity, planned early, deployed early, and acted early, actively "going up", "going down" and "going out". Shandong has established the first RCEP comprehensive service platform in the country, and established Japan, South Korea and RCEP Import Expo. At the same time, Shandong took the lead in issuing the "Preliminary Action Plan for the Implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement", taking Japan and South Korea as a breakthrough to accelerate the construction of a "golden channel" for trade with Japan and South Korea.

RCEP has released a series of dividends to foreign trade enterprises in Shandong. More than 90% of the goods will eventually achieve zero tariffs. The goods will be cleared within 48 hours, and the perishable goods will be released within 6 hours, which greatly reduces the time cost. In particular, RCEP has established a tariff reduction arrangement between China and Japan for the first time. The two sides have greatly reduced tariffs in many fields such as machinery and equipment, electronic information, chemicals, light industry and textiles. The promotion effect is obvious.

Lower tariffs have resulted in increased export opportunities and lower import costs. Luxi Group, located in Liaocheng, Shandong, is a large-scale comprehensive chemical enterprise group. After the RCEP came into effect, the export tariff of its formic acid products to Japan was reduced from the original 43% to 0. It is understood that in the export trade of Luxi Group to Japan , this product alone is expected to reduce tariffs of nearly 100,000 US dollars for customers in one year. In the first half of 2022, Luxi Group's exports to Japan increased by as much as 30% year-on-year.

Regional origin accumulation rules have also brought more export orders to companies. For example, Qingdao Guihua Knitting Co., Ltd. has invested in a knitting factory in Vietnam, and all products are exported to Japan. However, in the past, due to the restriction of ASEAN origin of no less than 70%, only local fabrics in Vietnam could be used. After RCEP comes into effect, the factory can use the rules of accumulation of origin to directly export fabrics from Qingdao to Vietnam. Let enterprises increase exports by 21.66 million yuan every year.

More and more Shandong enterprises have benefited from this. Import and export data show that in the first half of 2022, Shandong Customs and CCPIT issued RCEP certificates of origin for a total of 59,000 batches of export goods, ranking first in the country, with an export value of 18.39 billion yuan. Shandong Customs has a total of 2.32 billion yuan of imported goods that are subject to RCEP tax rate reduction of 1.1 billion yuan.

Various combinations of punches accelerate the growth of foreign trade

The conversion of old and new kinetic energy is a highlight of Shandong Province's economic development in recent years. This transformation also brought new momentum to Shandong's foreign trade.

Not long ago, Lunan Pharmaceutical Group shipped 7.5 million rosuvastatin calcium tablets to the United States. This is the first batch of preparations exported by Lunan Pharmaceutical to the United States, and the export volume is expected to exceed 100 million tablets next year. This is the result of Lunan Pharmaceutical's innovation drive. It is understood that after Lunan Pharmaceutical established the International Drug Research and Development Center, it has invested 150 million yuan in the research and development of international drugs every year.

In terms of cultivating foreign trade innovation entities, Shandong Province has spared no effort in recent years.

At present, Shandong Province has identified 11 high-quality foreign trade development zones, 10 import trade promotion innovation zones, 35 cross-border e-commerce entities, and 10 bases including Guangrao County have been rated as national foreign trade transformation and upgrading bases. In addition, Shandong accelerated the construction of a comprehensive pilot zone for cross-border e-commerce, and increased the export-oriented degree of market procurement trade pilots. The province's cross-border e-commerce, market procurement trade and other new business types accounted for about 9%, an increase of nearly 7 percentage points.

The development of foreign trade is inseparable from the contributions of important carriers such as comprehensive bonded zones and pilot free trade zones. All 13 comprehensive protection zones in Shandong Province have achieved customs closure operations, ranking third in the number of provinces and cities in the country, covering the 9 cities with the best foreign trade development in the province. Import and export data show that in 2021, the import and export value of comprehensive protection zones in Shandong Province will reach 488.42 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 93.8%, accounting for 16.7% of the province's total foreign trade import and export value, and its contribution to the province's foreign trade growth is 32.9%.

At the same time, Shandong continues to expand the circle of foreign trade friends by holding various activities. For example, the 2nd Qingdao Summit of Leaders of Multinational Corporations was successfully held, the brand of "Connecting Shandong with Fortune 500" series of activities was created, and the activities of "Dialogue Business Association · Qilu Covenant" and RCEP Economic and Trade Cooperation High-level Dialogue were held innovatively; Promote "one country, one industry, one exhibition", hold 45 "online + offline" exhibitions throughout the year; build "Shandong Commodity Online Exhibition Hall", a display platform for "Made in Shandong".

In terms of policy guarantees and professional services, Shandong Province also performed well. Its "Preliminary Action Plan for the Implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement" formulated 20 policies and measures, clarified 75 specific tasks, and jointly promoted the effective implementation of RCEP. Including the promotion of the socialization of the issuance of certificates of origin, a total of 41 enterprises have been identified as approved exporters, and a total of 1,395 RCEP declarations of origin have been issued independently, with a value of 5.7 billion yuan.

Enterprises are the main force of foreign trade. Since 2022, Shandong has issued more than 30 policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade, and "one enterprise, one policy" has helped enterprises to solve more than 2,800 demands on labor, customs clearance, logistics and other issues. For example, the Shandong Provincial Department of Commerce and financial institutions launched the "Qilu Import Loan", benefiting 96% of import enterprises. As of August this year, Shandong ICBC has served more than 3,000 enterprises through the "single window", and handled over 11,000 cross-border remittances with an amount of nearly 8 billion yuan.

This series of combined punches has made Shandong's foreign trade more resilient, and it has also made Shandong a "dark horse" that shoulders the important task of stabilizing foreign trade across the country.