SCIO press conference on China Customs' efforts to safeguard borders, advance Chinese modernization
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 24, 2023
Phoenix TV:
Data recently released by the GACC showed that China's total foreign trade dropped by 0.8% in the first two months of this year. We also noticed many media reports of an increasing number of empty containers at ports, triggering the public's concern over this year's imports and exports. What is the GACC's judgment regarding this year's foreign trade? Thank you.
Yu Jianhua:
Thank you for your question. This year's foreign trade is of deep public concern. As you said, the GACC has issued data for the first two months of this year, which was interpreted by the relevant departments. The GACC has closely monitored foreign trade developments since March. Overall, we believe that foreign trade has gotten off to a stable start and presented positive growth trends. In terms of scale, the total export value in the first two months surpassed our expectations and increased by 0.9%, hitting a record high. The total import and export value in the first two months exceeded 6 trillion yuan, only the second time in history. The peak for the same period before the pandemic was less than 5 trillion yuan. Regarding the composition, as China took the lead in reopening the economy during the pandemic, the export of anti-pandemic supplies and stay-at-home economy products significantly increased, raising the foreign trade baseline. Based on our calculations, excluding one-time factors, imports and exports in the first two months of this year grew by more than 10%. As for trends, based on weekly monitoring, China's foreign trade rebounded since February and increased by over 15% in the last week in February compared with the previous week. As to neighboring countries, China's foreign trade is performing better than neighboring economies that have released relevant data.
Certainly, foreign trade does face many difficulties and challenges, with the weakening of foreign demand being the most concerning. High global inflation and sluggish growth in major economies have continued to impact global trade. The WTO recently predicted that global trade in goods during the first quarter of this year will be weak, and it expected it to grow by a mere 1% for the entire year. In addition, some countries' decoupling with others and severing supply chains, geopolitical risks, and recent fluctuations in the financial markets of some Western countries have impacted the global trade environment, which is also an external challenge for promoting stability and improving the quality of China's foreign trade.
However, we must also see the positive side. In the first two months, more companies have entered the field of foreign trade in terms of business types, and 46,000 new foreign trade businesses have been registered with Customs authorities, which shows that people's confidence is accumulating and recovering. In terms of orders, according to our tracking and monitoring, the proportion of companies with increasing export orders has continued to rise. In terms of new kinetic energy, the total exports of electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar cells increased by 60%. The imports and exports of cross-border e-commerce of concern to the public increased by 15.8%. As for trade diversification, China's imports and exports to countries along the Belt and Road increased by more than 10%, and the total imports and exports to other RCEP members increased by more than 3%.
You also mentioned the issue of empty containers, which we are also paying attention to. This is due to reasons including an excessive amount of new containers that were put into use in the previous period, lower domestic storage cost, and the short-term return of empty containers in large quantities after the easing of the epidemic situation abroad, as well as seasonality. A large number of empty containers are ready to depart at our ports, which to some extent can be viewed as a positive reflection of the international market's continued optimism about China's export capacity in the next stage. According to the latest customs data, since late February, the volume of export containers being used has continued to grow.
On the whole, the foreign trade situation remains severe and complicated, but it also contains many opportunities, and the difficulties are more global in nature. In comparison, China still possesses an obvious competitive advantage. With the overall improvement of China's economic situation, the momentum of the stable start of foreign trade in the first two months is expected to continue. Therefore, we are fully confident in achieving the goal of stabilizing and improving the quality of China's foreign trade this year. Thank you.
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