The Potential Of New Foreign Trade Products And New Business Formats Continues To Be Released, And The Chinese Market Continues To Enhance Its Magnetic Attraction To Foreign Investment.
Looking back on 2023, China's foreign trade has overcome multiple challenges such as weak external demand and falling prices, and has generally achieved smooth operation, demonstrating strong development resilience; China has experienced certain fluctuations in attracting foreign investment, but the scale of investment is still at a historically high level, and multinational companies are coming. The momentum of Chinese investment continues unabated. Under the arrangements of the Central Economic Work Conference, how will China continue to expand high-level opening up to the outside world and consolidate the fundamentals of foreign trade and foreign investment? Today's (January 4) series of reports, "New Year Economic Observation", will focus on the development of foreign trade and foreign investment.
With an import and export scale of nearly 42 trillion yuan and an international export market share of more than 14%, it can be said that in the past year, the scale and share of China's foreign trade have remained stable, and the foreign trade structure has continued to be optimized. Taking foreign trade entities as an example, the exports of private enterprises have accounted for more than 60% of China's exports. Trade methods and product structures have also been continuously optimized and improved. China's foreign trade has delivered a satisfactory report card.
The familiar "three new things" and various energy storage products are leading the green and low-carbon transformation globally; at the same time, we also have some digitally empowered products that are loved by consumers in various countries, such as robots, Sweepers and some competitive products are also showing good export momentum. For example, high-tech and high value-added products such as ships.
The Central Economic Work Conference also made special arrangements for the high-quality development of foreign trade in 2024. Among the new drivers of foreign trade, the keyword "expanding trade in intermediate goods" has been mentioned frequently recently. Intermediate goods include raw materials, semi-finished products, components and other products, and have become the main driving force for global trade growth. For China, intermediate goods account for 47% of total exports, and there is still room for further growth.
In recent years, there has been a manifestation in the field of international economic and trade that all countries have paid special attention to the introduction of intermediate goods. The purpose of introducing intermediate goods is to increase local manufacturing capabilities. In the face of this demand, China has a complete industrial system and strong supply capacity, so we are capable of providing a large number of high-quality intermediate products to countries around the world.
In addition, for the rapidly growing cross-border e-commerce trade, in 2024, including the improvement of customs clearance, taxation, foreign exchange and other policies, the improvement of supervision and facilitation, as well as international trade cooperation such as Silk Road e-commerce, will continue to Promote the expansion of cross-border e-commerce trade.
The WTO also predicts that by 2030, digital technology is likely to boost global trade volume by 1.8 to 2 percentage points per year, which is very impressive. Therefore, in 2024, we will continue to make efforts to promote the development of cross-border e-commerce, especially in expanding the export of cross-border e-commerce.
There have been fluctuations in China's attraction of foreign investment in 2023, but the scale of investment from January to November still reached a historical high of 1.04 trillion yuan. In August 2023, the Ministry of Commerce focused on the outstanding common issues reported by foreign-funded enterprises and issued the "Opinions of the State Council on Further Optimizing the Foreign Investment Environment and Increasing Attraction of Foreign Investment", which is 24 articles to stabilize foreign investment. These policies will also be implemented in 2024. Continue to implement this year.
Multinational companies, experts and scholars from foreign business associations generally welcomed the 24 measures to stabilize foreign investment, believing that these policies reflect the Chinese government's determination to maintain an open, stable and sustainable investment environment in the context of increasing global economic uncertainty. And can actually support the development of enterprises.
As the effects of the foreign investment policies that have been introduced gradually become apparent, and new policies are introduced, the "magnetic attraction" of the Chinese market for foreign investment will continue to increase in 2024. For example, the three types of subsidies for foreign personnel, including personal tax exemptions and other preferential tax policies mentioned in Article 24 on Stabilizing Foreign Investment, will continue to be implemented until 2027; in terms of foreign investment access, China will relax market access in service industries such as telecommunications and medical care.
Continuously relax restrictions on foreign investment access, effectively guarantee access, actively promote fair competition, continuously optimize the foreign investment environment, and stabilize foreign investment expectations and confidence. It is believed that more and more multinational companies will expand investment in China in the future and share China's high-end Dividends of quality development.
In the past two years, negative impacts such as geopolitical spillover and increased trade protection restrictions have continued. However, as can be seen from the data, the fundamentals of China's long-term economic improvement have not changed, and the dividends of opening up to the outside world will continue to appear. This year, the potential of new foreign trade products and new business formats continues to be released, and China's market size, innovation speed and industrial advantages are still very attractive to foreign investment. In 2024, as policy dividends continue to be released, favorable conditions for the development of foreign trade and foreign investment are constantly accumulating, and confidence will continue to build.