Foreign trade development is resilient enough.

Since the beginning of this year, in the face of the complicated domestic and international economic situation, China’s foreign trade has withstood the pressure. In the first quarter, the total import and export volume reached 9.42 trillion yuan, up 10.7% year-on-year. The overall start was good, which laid a good foundation for achieving the annual target and fully reflected the resilience of foreign trade development.

We should also see that China’s foreign trade development environment is becoming more severe and complicated, and it faces many risks and challenges. A number of experts said that we should do a good job in stabilizing foreign trade policies, study effective new policies, and strive to keep foreign trade running in a reasonable range throughout the year.

Steady foreign trade policy continues to exert strength.

In the first quarter, despite the complicated and severe international environment, China’s export enterprises had a strong ability to adapt to changes in external demand. At the same time, the policy of stabilizing foreign trade continued to exert strength, and the effect of building the "Belt and Road" continued to emerge. The new foreign trade format developed rapidly and achieved a steady start on the whole.

"In the case of a high base, China’s foreign trade still maintains a double-digit rapid growth, which fully reflects the resilience of China’s foreign trade development." Liu Xiangdong, deputy director of the Economic Research Department of China International Economic Exchange Center, said.

Data show that in the first quarter, China’s industrial export delivery value increased by 14.4% year-on-year, and continued to maintain rapid growth. Among them, export delivery value’s automobile manufacturing industry and special equipment manufacturing industry both increased by more than 20%. "China has a complete industrial system and strong supporting capacity, which can quickly adapt to changes in international market demand, and foreign export demand for industrial products in China has expanded." Fu Linghui, director of the National Statistics Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, said.

After entering March, the local cluster epidemic situation in China showed the characteristics of multiple points, wide coverage and frequent occurrence, and the supply chain of foreign trade industry chain was affected to some extent. "At present, China’s foreign trade development is under great pressure." Bai Ming, deputy director of the International Market Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said that on the one hand, the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic continues, the bottleneck of the global supply chain has not been alleviated, and the shortage of important raw materials such as chips continues to plague foreign trade enterprises; On the other hand, geopolitical risks are high, commodity prices are rising, and global economic and trade recovery is facing greater uncertainty.

China has issued a series of policy measures to help small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises improve their production and business environment, and achieved certain results.

Regional cooperation is deepening.

On January 1st this year, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) came into effect for 10 member countries. Up to now, the number of effective members of RCEP has reached 12.

Since the entry into force of RCEP, dividends have begun to appear. Customs statistics show that in the first quarter, China’s total import and export value to the other 14 member countries of RCEP exceeded 2 trillion yuan, up 6.9% year-on-year, accounting for 30.4% of China’s total foreign trade value in the same period. Among them, the year-on-year growth rate of import and export volume with South Korea, Malaysia and other countries exceeded double digits.

Judging from local conditions, the effective implementation of RCEP has played a positive role in stabilizing foreign trade. Take Shandong as an example. In the first quarter, Jinan Customs, Qingdao Customs and Shandong CCPIT issued 24,000 RCEP certificates of origin, ranking first in the country. Shandong’s import and export volume to other 14 member countries of RCEP increased by 20.9% compared with the same period of last year.

According to statistics, in the first quarter, Chinese enterprises used RCEP to import 6.7 billion yuan and enjoy import tariff concessions of 130 million yuan; Enjoy the export of 37.1 billion yuan, and it is expected to enjoy the tariff preference of 250 million yuan from member countries.

At the same time, China’s circle of friends to build the "Belt and Road" continues to expand. Since the beginning of this year, China has signed cooperation documents with Nicaragua, Syria, Argentina and Malawi to jointly build the "Belt and Road". "Up to now, China has signed more than 200 cooperation documents with 149 countries and 32 international organizations to jointly build the Belt and Road." Meng Wei, deputy director of the Political Research Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, said.

China’s trade with countries along the "Belt and Road" has become increasingly close. In the first quarter, the import and export value of China and the countries along the Belt and Road accounted for 31.1% of China’s total foreign trade import and export value, which was 1.4 percentage points higher than that of 2021 and 6.1 percentage points higher than that of 2013.

As an important guarantee for interconnection on the "Belt and Road", the overall operation of China-Europe trains is stable and efficient, showing strong development resilience. In the first quarter, China-Europe trains operated a total of 3,630 trains and transported 350,000 TEUs, up by 7% and 9% respectively year-on-year, and the comprehensive heavy container rate was 97.7%. The monthly train volume remained above 1,000 trains for 23 consecutive months, effectively ensuring the stability of the international industrial chain supply chain.

Controlling the epidemic situation is the key to the steady growth of foreign trade

Since the beginning of this year, new changes have taken place in the characteristics of epidemic spread, but as long as we adhere to scientific epidemic prevention, we can gradually block the spread of epidemic and reduce the adverse impact on economic and social development. "If the epidemic situation in Shanghai and other places was effectively controlled in May, China’s foreign trade will continue to grow in the second quarter." Liu Xiangdong said.

"The pressure of foreign trade in the second quarter is not necessarily smaller than that in the first quarter, but the momentum of foreign trade development is still sufficient." Bai Ming believes that the long-term fundamentals of China’s economy have not changed, and the trend of sustained economic recovery has not changed. China’s industrial system is complete, infrastructure is constantly improving, the advantages of super-large-scale market are obvious, and the effectiveness of innovation-driven development is constantly emerging, which has a good foundation for promoting sustained and healthy economic development. "China’s policy toolbox for supporting foreign trade development is well stocked, and measures to stabilize foreign trade are put in place." Bai Ming said that the RCEP dividend is gradually released, and the trading partners tend to be diversified, which are favorable factors to support the steady growth of foreign trade. He also stressed that small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises are under great pressure at present, so it is very important to stabilize market players.

"Since last year, China has implemented more active policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment, and has achieved remarkable results. In particular, under the premise of normalization of epidemic prevention and control, it has continued to expand trade channels, optimized trade structure, fostered the development of new trade formats, and effectively promoted the high-quality development of foreign trade." Liu Xiangdong said that in the next step, facing the new situation and challenges at home and abroad, it is necessary to comprehensively improve the pertinence of foreign trade development, focus on unblocking the supply chain of industrial chain and ensure the stability of industrial production. In view of the high fluctuation of international commodity prices, we will accelerate the diversification of supply channels. Support foreign trade enterprises to make full use of digital technology to develop new formats such as cross-border e-commerce and overseas warehouses, and effectively do a more precise job in stabilizing trade channels and markets.

"Although the international environment is complicated and severe, on the whole, the world economy is still recovering, and the demand for China’s export products will still increase. China’s export enterprises are also more capable of adapting to changes in external demand. " Fu Linghui said. (Reporter Feng Qiyu)