General

"I can feel that the situation will be much better next year." The relevant responsible person of the three foreign trade enterprises said. Under multiple signals, foreign trade enterprises' confidence in the development of foreign trade at the end of this year and next year has rebounded. Correspondingly, China's foreign trade is coming to a high-quality end. On December 7, customs data showed that in the first 11 months of this year, China's total import and export value was 38.34 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.6% over the same period last year (the same below).

Experts believe that although this growth rate is not too high, it is the growth rate under the high base of the double-digit growth of foreign trade last year, which has set a new high in the scale of China's foreign trade. At the same time, China has always maintained the first position in the world in foreign trade, which will not be shaken easily. At present, it is also shifting from "quantity" to "high-quality development".

Experts said that, next, with the continuous optimization of foreign trade and epidemic policies, China's foreign trade will continue to improve. At the same time, strengthening the integration of domestic and foreign trade, and improving the resilience and risk resistance of China's foreign trade enterprises will help seize the opportunity in the next round of international market competition.

Strength: steady growth against the trend

As one of the "troikas" driving China's economy, China's import and export still live up to expectations. According to customs data, in the first 11 months of this year, China's total import and export value was 38.34 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.6% over the same period last year. Among them, the export reached 21.84 trillion yuan, up 11.9%; Imports reached 16.5 trillion yuan, up 4.6%; The trade surplus was 5.34 trillion yuan, an increase of 42.8%.

Peng Bo, a researcher at the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, believes that this data is completely in line with expectations. "If we have to pick out some unsatisfactory aspects, the growth rate of the total import and export value is not too high. However, it should be pointed out that this is the result of the combined impact of the external environment of the global economic slowdown and the spread of the epidemic on China's economy." Peng Bo said.

"What's more," Hu Qimu, deputy secretary-general of the China Digital Real 50 Forum, further analyzed, "in 2021, China's total import and export value of goods trade will reach 39.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 21.4% year on year, reaching a new historical high. This year, despite the high base and high growth rate last year, China's foreign trade strength has been demonstrated."

According to customs data, in the first 11 months, China's general trade import and export amounted to 24.47 trillion yuan, an increase of 12.4%. The import and export of private enterprises reached 19.41 trillion yuan, up 13.6%. Over the same period, the import and export of foreign-invested enterprises reached 12.7 trillion yuan, down 0.1%. At the same time, the export of mechanical and electrical products reached 12.47 trillion yuan, up 8.4%.

"These data all reflect the improvement of China's foreign trade quality and its position in the global value chain." Peng Bo said, "In particular, auto exports reached 363.76 billion yuan, an increase of 79.3%, which is a typical case of China's industry growing against the trend under adverse circumstances and reflects China's breakthrough in global high-end industries."

Thinking: It is not feasible to simply take "quantity"

"China has the advantage of a super large domestic demand market, a large number of dynamic and innovative private enterprises, and the advantage of low cost in the world. It can produce Chinese made products with low price, good quality, and excellent brand." Hong Yong, an associate researcher at the E-commerce Research Institute of the Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, said, "Therefore, foreign trade enterprises should not worry too much about the situation of foreign trade. Recently, due to the continued implementation of the '20 measures' to optimize epidemic prevention and control, the Federal Reserve's interest rate increase slowed down and other favorable factors, the domestic and foreign markets will continue to recover in the future."

Based on this, Ms. Cheng, a responsible person of a freight forwarding company in Tianjin, and Yuyao Foreign Trade Co., Ltd. said that they both believed that the foreign trade market would continue to improve in the future. "Under the current foreign trade measures and epidemic prevention measures, the domestic economy will surely gradually recover." Both said, "I can feel that the situation will be much better next year."

At the same time, foreign trade enterprises have seen the risks brought by simply taking "quantity". "From the reaction of many peer customers, we have observed that the purchasing power of the European and American markets has declined this year, and the local platform has become increasingly mature, which still has a great impact on the cross-border platform. Many big sellers are constantly adjusting their operational priorities, delivery methods, etc., and many companies are even constantly adjusting their internal structures and incentive methods of operators to protect their business." Yang Siqi, the operation director of a cross-border e-commerce enterprise in Hangzhou, said, "The upstream and downstream companies have also been affected, especially the shipping schedule of logistics and freight forwarders is unstable, flights are canceled, and even some freight forwarders can't continue to operate, so the risk of blindly moving volume is very big."

Ms. Cheng also said, "Influenced by such factors as the 'internal' competition pressure of the industry, when going along with the 'volume', competitive factors and cost factors can only be superimposed to obtain a very thin profit".

Therefore, foreign trade enterprises have begun to try to transform from "quantity" to "quality". Yang Siqi pointed out that in the current environment, traditional foreign trade exhibitions and other forms are no longer effective, laws and regulations related to e-commerce in various countries are gradually improved, and advertising strategies such as Google are no longer novel means, and are gradually transparent. "All these are driving foreign trade practitioners to improve the blocking points, breakpoints and weak links in the entire business chain through continuous innovation on the basis of doing a good job in products pragmatically, strengthening their supply chain, and developing in accordance with laws and regulations, so as to ensure that the stable development of enterprises will not be eliminated." Yang Siqi said, "Our supply chain was once hit, but we also saw new opportunities, so by adjusting sales channels, developing new logistics channels, building overseas warehouses, trying to innovate payment channels and other links, we finally achieved the set goals with our partners and customers without danger."

Solving: rudder high quality

At the same time, China's foreign trade is developing from "quantity" to "quality". How to develop foreign trade with high quality? Wang Wentao, Minister of Commerce, said publicly that to promote the stable development of foreign trade, enhance the comprehensive competitiveness of foreign trade and promote the high-quality development of foreign trade, innovative development needs to be put in a more prominent position.

At the same time, customs data show that China's imports and exports increased by 8.6% year-on-year in the first 11 months of this year, 9.5% year-on-year in the first 10 months, 9.9% year-on-year in the first three quarters, 10.1% year-on-year in the first 8 months, and 10.4% year-on-year in the first 7 months. On the whole, since the second half of the year, China's foreign trade has maintained its growth rate, but the growth rate has continued to narrow.

In this regard, Peng Bo believes that the foreign trade situation in 2021 is relatively special. It is not only a natural result of China's own effective epidemic prevention and control and the efficient operation of the industrial chain supply chain, but also an unnatural product of the extreme expansion of monetary policy under the ineffective epidemic prevention and control abroad. In a sense, it is a short-term phenomenon that is difficult to sustain. "In the long run, with the growth of China's economy, the proportion of China's imports and exports in the world has increased. However, it will be more and more difficult to adjust the growth of imports and exports, and it will continue to return to the average growth rate of global imports and exports." Peng Bo said.

According to customs data, in 1977, China's exports accounted for only 0.67% of the world's total exports, and 7.5% in 1978. By 2021, China's exports to the world have reached 15.1%. Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China's exports to the world have increased more than 20 times. "It is difficult to further expand from the traditional path in the future." Peng Bo said, "The breakthrough is to improve the quality of foreign trade and deepen the connotation."

From a foreign perspective, Hu Qimu pointed out that the western manufacturing industry has a large number of parts and intermediate inputs that need to be imported from China. When the growth rate of investment in western real industries declines, the orders for purchasing parts and other industrial products will certainly decline. "Today, the Federal Reserve's interest rate increase and energy price rise, the investment cost and operating cost of enterprises are rising at the same time, but the investment willingness and profitability are declining, which has affected our external demand market at the same time. This is where we are more difficult to take the initiative." Hu Qimu said, "Therefore, it is necessary to develop high-quality foreign trade, and one of the key points is to improve the stability and anti risk ability of the domestic market."

"Stabilizing and optimizing the industrial structure of the domestic market and developing domestic demand can drive foreign demand, and help China's foreign trade enterprises seize the first opportunity in the next round of international market competition." Hu Qimu further said that through high-quality development methods such as the integration of domestic and foreign trade, orders that cannot be sold abroad can be exported for domestic sales. While expanding domestic demand, it also promoted the optimization of domestic industrial structure and capacity. In this way, once there is a systematic risk in the overseas market, foreign trade enterprises can immediately turn to domestic demand; With the recovery of overseas markets, domestic foreign trade enterprises can also respond quickly ahead of other countries.

"For example, from the current point of view, China is the country least affected by the above factors in the global market. At this time, many European and American countries may transfer their high-end manufacturing industry to China, such as German automobile enterprises. This is a good opportunity for China to undertake a new round of high-end industry transfer, and it is also based on the high-quality development of China's domestic demand market, which is conducive to the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry and driving foreign trade to high-end. ”Hu Qimu said.

Breakthrough: New business types and models are the fulcrum

For the future, Yang Siqi also has expectations for the foreign trade industry. She said that she hopes, for example, Yiwu's "1039 market procurement model" can be copied to more regions. "More efficient and convenient, saving us more costs; and our overseas warehouse business, after we get through, we hope to get the government's policy support and publicity, so that more Chinese sellers can make full use of our overseas warehouse, and solve the problems of double tariffs, returns and other issues they encounter in cross-border transactions." Yang Siqi said, "In terms of payment business, we also hope to promote more exchanges between our enterprises and banks, strengthen government enterprise cooperation, and constantly innovate to improve the convenience of foreign exchange collection and settlement of our foreign trade."

On the whole, in order to achieve the high-quality development of foreign trade, the Ministry of Commerce is also planning and coordinating overseas warehouses. It is understood that the Ministry of Commerce is making greater efforts to support the development of overseas warehouses, build and improve the network of overseas warehouses, promote the construction of overseas intelligent logistics platforms, cultivate a number of offshore trade center cities (regions), develop and expand new forms and models of foreign trade, and promote the development of trade at a higher level and quality. Build a service trade innovation and development demonstration area, create a number of pilot areas for global trade digitization, and develop green trade at the same time. In addition, as of this year, China has achieved full coverage of 31 provincial administrative regions in the mainland.

On this basis, Peng Bo further said that in order to achieve the high-quality development of foreign trade, we can also try to shift foreign trade from exporting agricultural products and handicraft products to exporting industrial products, from exporting primary manufactured goods to exporting high-tech products, from foreign capital led import and export to domestic capital led import and export, from processing trade to general trade, from export oriented gradually to import driven.

In addition, Hu Qimu said that China still needs to vigorously develop service trade. "Although we are the largest trade country in goods, from the perspective of service trade, our competitiveness is relatively weak, and service trade has high added value." Hu Qimu said, "We also need to develop new forms of trade. As Ms. Yang Siqi said, we can see the needs of enterprises, promote cross-border e-commerce digital trade, and improve the efficiency of the circulation link. In addition, the high-quality development of foreign trade is actually the high-quality development of the industry. Because we say that" production, distribution, circulation and consumption ", the basic core is production, and there must be a high-quality industrial structure to support foreign trade."