Overseas Online Comments: Withstanding Multiple Pressures, China’S Foreign Trade Shows Resilience

"China's import and export data have improved" and "the decline has narrowed and is better than expected"... In the past few days, foreign media such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have intensively reported on China's new foreign trade data, and "improvement" has become a keyword. In the first eight months of this year, China's total import and export value of goods trade was 27.08 trillion yuan. Although it dropped slightly by 0.1% year-on-year, the scale was still at a historical high for the same period. Faced with the current sluggish global economic and trade growth, rising protectionism, and sluggish external demand market, it is not easy for China's foreign trade to maintain smooth operation.

According to a report by The Washington Post in June this year, the World Bank released a report stating that the global economy is slowing down sharply. Global economic growth this year is expected to drop from 3.1% in 2022 to 2.1%, and will remain "weak" next year. . Under such circumstances, China's foreign trade has shown strong resilience, with exports achieving month-on-month growth for three consecutive months, and the decline in imports and exports in August has narrowed compared with June and July, sending a signal of stabilization. It should be noted that China's foreign trade is currently experiencing pressures, ups and downs, and challenges, but new foreign trade products and new business formats are also showing ample momentum.

Cross-border e-commerce has become a new bright spot in China’s foreign trade. The "Digital Trade Development and Cooperation Report 2023" recently released during the China Service Trade Fair shows that China's B2C e-commerce transaction volume will account for 37.2% of the world's total in 2022, ranking first in the world. E-commerce uses digital technology to optimize international transactions and production processes, reduce transaction and production costs, optimize supply and demand matching, and efficiently allocate various cross-border resources, playing an important role in China's foreign trade and the two-way flow of cross-border funds. Take Pinduoduo’s cross-border e-commerce platform Temu as an example. The Deutsche Welle website reported on September 5 that the e-commerce platform has developed rapidly since its launch in the United States in September last year. In the first month of its launch, Temu had It has 4.5 million monthly active users. As of July this year, its number of monthly active users has reached 77.3 million, more than double the number at the beginning of the year. Deutsche Welle quoted a Toronto retail analyst as saying that because Temu has innovated a factory direct sales model, it is able to provide preferential prices and a wide variety of goods that do not traditionally exist in the Western retail industry. It looks very tempting amid massive inflation in food, housing and gas in Western countries. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on September 1 that industry insiders and experts said that the rise of Temu has brought global online shopping into a new era.

China’s foreign trade export structure is better. In the first eight months of this year, technology-intensive and high-value-added industries represented by electromechanical products were full of momentum. Among them, the export of automobiles was 442.7 billion yuan, an increase of 104.4%, and the performance was very impressive. The New York Times reported that the total export value of China's automobile industry has quadrupled in just three years, surpassing Japan this year and becoming the world's largest automobile exporter. CNN published a report titled "Electric Vehicles Launched by Chinese Automakers Sweeping the World" stating that in the first half of this year, Chinese companies exported nearly 350,000 electric vehicles to nine European countries, exceeding In terms of export volume for the whole of 2022, the EU's imports of Chinese cars have quadrupled in the past five years. China's foreign trade structure continues to be optimized and upgraded, reflecting the new trend of high-quality development of the Chinese economy.

The effect of China’s policy of stabilizing foreign trade continues to show. In recent times, various localities and departments have continuously enriched, adjusted and improved relevant policies in response to practical problems in different fields, and implemented a combination of policies to stabilize foreign trade to help companies stabilize orders and expand markets. In order to further promote the goal of stabilizing and improving the quality of import and export, more measures to help enterprises are continuously introduced: the Ministry of Commerce will continue to make efforts in facilitating cross-border business personnel exchanges, supporting enterprises in domestic and overseas exhibition marketing, and improving the level of foreign trade financial services. ; The General Administration of Customs will further expand the "single window" function of international trade at the national and local levels, establish and improve a normalized communication and exchange mechanism with enterprises, and deepen the "customs chief to deliver policies to your doorstep"... It is believed that these measures will further enhance the efficiency of foreign trade enterprises. drive and consolidate confidence in foreign trade growth. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the joint construction of the “Belt and Road” initiative. Representatives from more than 90 countries have confirmed their participation in the third “Belt and Road” International Cooperation Summit Forum. In the first eight months of this year, China's imports and exports to the 152 "Belt and Road" countries were 12.62 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.6%, accounting for 46.6% of China's foreign trade scale. As the economic and trade exchanges between China and the countries participating in the "Belt and Road" initiative are steadily improving, it will further help China's foreign trade to stabilize the scale and optimize the structure.

The long-term fundamentals of China's economy have not changed. Coupled with a good industrial system and complete production capacity, the development of foreign trade has sufficient resilience and room for maneuver. At the same time, China insists on opening up to the outside world, actively promotes international economic and trade cooperation, and has successively introduced a series of policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade. There is reason to expect that the comprehensive effects will continue to appear.