General

In the first eight months of 2022, the global economy will face many challenges. The latest "Commodity Barometer" released by the World Trade Organization (WTO) recently shows that the growth of global trade is stagnant. The growth rate of global trade in the second quarter shown by the index is lower than that in the first quarter, and may continue to be weak in the second half of the year. In this case, the performance of major participants in global trade is more concerned, and even determines the development trend of global trade to some extent. It is easy to see from the analysis of China's foreign trade data that, despite the complex external environment, China's foreign trade has provided strong support for building a new development pattern in terms of total volume, trade structure and trade partners.

According to the data released by the General Administration of Customs, in the first eight months of this year, China achieved a total import and export value of 27.3 trillion yuan, an increase of 10.1% over the same period last year. Among them, the export reached 15.48 trillion yuan, up 14.2%; Imports reached 11.82 trillion yuan, up 5.2%. Ten years ago, in 2012, China's total import and export value was about 24.57 trillion yuan, including 12.85 trillion yuan for exports and 11.72 trillion yuan for imports. The total import and export volume, export volume and import volume completed in the first eight months of this year exceeded the data of 2012, respectively 111.1%, 120.5% and 100.9% of the total trade volume of 2012. The continuous expansion of trade volume reflects that China has closer ties with the global market, and the scale of cross-border commodity flows has increased, providing an important channel and guarantee for the mutual promotion of domestic and international double circulation.

The import and export of general trade continued a double-digit growth in the first eight months, and its proportion in China's foreign and international trade continued to increase, highlighting the impact of the domestic big cycle on the trade structure. In the first eight months, China's general trade import and export reached 17.55 trillion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 14.1%, 4 percentage points faster than the growth of the total import and export value. The rapid growth of general trade makes its share in China's total import and export value reach 64.3%, 2.3 percentage points higher than that from January to August in 2021. Compared with processing trade, general trade can better reflect the level and capacity of a country's foreign trade. In the case of relatively stable trade in agricultural products, with the enhancement of manufacturing capacity, the international market comparative advantage of industrial manufactured products will expand through general trade, and vice versa. Enterprises in all countries are trying to improve the international competitiveness of their products. Except for a few economies that build tariff barriers with trade protectionism, most enterprises seek their own development through reasonable competition in the international trade market.

The increase in the scale and proportion of China's general trade reflects the improvement in the quality of China's foreign trade and the enhancement of its ability to develop independently. The corresponding is processing trade. As a processing trade that once accounted for half of China's foreign trade, the proportion in the first eight months dropped to 20.1%, but it still amounted to 5.48 trillion yuan, a 3.5% increase. If the processing trade volume of the first eight months is equal to the whole year, the scale of 8.2 trillion yuan is basically equivalent to the annual processing trade volume of 2012 (8.4 trillion yuan). This shows that China's position in global trade has remained stable for a long time, even though the United States and Europe and other countries have vigorously promoted the return of manufacturing industries, and developing countries and emerging economies have continued to promote development and improve processing trade capacity, which also creates good conditions for the construction of a new development pattern. In the current global economy with the rise of trade protectionism, the frustration of the industrial chain supply chain, high inflation and unstable expectations, enterprises from all countries still have strong confidence in China's economy and industry, and are willing to use China as a processing base to produce industrial products that meet the needs of the global market.

The geographical structure of international trade is a comprehensive response to such factors as the comparative advantage of countries and the trade environment. The trade relations between major trading partners have a decisive impact on the international trade situation. In the first eight months, ASEAN was still China's largest trading partner, accounting for 15% of China's total foreign trade, and the growth rate was 3.9 percentage points faster than China's overall foreign trade growth. The growth rate of trade between China and the EU, the second largest trading partner, was 2.6 percentage points faster than that of China's foreign trade as a whole. The trade between China and the United States, which ranked third and fourth, and between China and South Korea, was 2.3 percentage points slower than China's foreign trade. The top four trade growth differences may further widen the trade volume gap between major trading partners.

Since this year, RCEP has taken effect, creating good conditions for the recovery and strengthening of the regional industrial chain and supply chain network, and has become an important external development focus of the new development pattern. The attraction of China's continuous opening up and the huge and expanding market is promoting the international circulation to be more centered on China. Trade also creates conditions for transnational corporations to seek a compliant and reasonable transnational network development model and make full use of resources in various countries, so that they can reduce the negative impact of inadequate resource supply and fluctuations in the international trade market.