The Long-Term Positive Trend Of China'S Foreign Trade Has Not Changed

China's foreign trade competitiveness demonstrates resilience. From its own point of view, China's foreign trade maintained steady growth in the first seven months, and the scale hit a new high in the same period of history. This record high was achieved against the backdrop of a complex and severe external environment and a slowdown in global trade and investment, and it was also achieved when early-stage factors such as anti-epidemic materials and "stay-at-home economy" products faded. From the perspective of the surrounding area, China's exports are in stark contrast to the surrounding economies that have released data. Preliminary data show that in July, South Korea’s exports fell by 16.5% year-on-year, falling for 10 consecutive months since October last year, and the cumulative decline in the first seven months was as high as 13.0%; Vietnam’s exports fell by 3.5% year-on-year, five consecutive months since March this year. Monthly decline, the longest losing streak in 14 years; the major export-oriented countries in the surrounding area all underperformed China. From a global perspective, China's foreign trade performance is better than the global average. The WTO expects global trade in goods to grow by 1.7% this year, significantly lower than last year's 2.7%. Trade slowdown is a common challenge facing the world, and major economies cannot escape downward pressure. The year-on-year growth rate of US and European exports has turned negative since April this year, and the year-on-year growth rate of US imports has even turned negative since February this year, and dragged down by weak domestic demand, the recent decline has expanded.

New drivers of China's foreign trade continue to emerge. First, driven by industrial transformation and upgrading, many products have withstood the pressure of weakening external demand and performed well in exports. In the first seven months, China exported 7.83 trillion yuan of mechanical and electrical products, a year-on-year increase of 4.4%, accounting for 58.1% of the total export value. Among them, the export of automobiles and ships increased by 118.5% and 23.8% respectively year-on-year. The "three new" products represented by electric passenger vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar batteries have shown strong growth in foreign trade exports, bringing new vitality to China's manufacturing industry and foreign trade development. Second, with the vigorous development of the digital economy, new forms of trade such as cross-border e-commerce have risen rapidly. In recent years, the advantages in "buying the world and selling the world" have been continuously consolidated and the potential has been continuously released. Cross-border e-commerce is becoming a new engine for the high-quality development of foreign trade, and is gradually changing from "new foreign trade format" to "foreign trade new normal" . In the first half of the year, cross-border e-commerce exports increased by 19.9% year-on-year, creating favorable conditions for the quality and expansion of China-China foreign trade. Third, China's foreign trade "circle of friends" has also continued to expand under the superimposed efforts of high-quality joint construction of the "Belt and Road", implementation of the free trade pilot zone upgrading strategy, and expansion of the global network of high-standard free trade zones. In the first seven months, China's total import and export value to countries along the "Belt and Road" was 8.06 trillion yuan, an increase of 7.4%; among them, exports were 4.76 trillion yuan, an increase of 12.6%. Especially as the "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement" (RCEP) officially came into effect for the Philippines, the world's largest free trade zone has entered a new stage of full implementation, and trade exchanges with RCEP member countries will also become an important support for China's foreign trade.