China will step up efforts to stabilize foreign trade performance while improving the trade structure through policy measures, government officials said. Experts said the country is expected to further vitalize enterprises in the foreign trade sector while forging stronger trade cooperation with developed as well as emerging economies, amid negative factors including rising protectionism and weakening global demand. Such endeavors will expand and upgrade China’s trade and also will be conducive to global economic recovery, they said. Wang Shouwen, Vice Minister of Commerce and China’s International Trade Representative, told a news conference that domestic enterprises involved in foreign trade are challenged by increases in trade risks, pressure to enhance profitability, and inconveniences in participating in foreign trade fairs, though uncertainties in external demand remain the biggest issue. “We will try hard to create more trade opportunities,” he said, adding that the country will widely resume offline trade fairs, improve the efficiency of processing APEC business travel card applications, and facilitate the orderly resumption of international passenger flights.
Wang said the country will stabilize foreign trade in key products such as automobiles, ensure the development of foreign-trade enterprises, and enhance the formats and environment for foreign trade. Key measures will include helping automakers to establish and improve their global marketing and service networks, ensuring funding for large-scale equipment projects, and accelerating the revision of the catalog of encouraged technologies and products for import.
They also will include encouraging banks to better meet the financing demands from small and medium-sized foreign-trade enterprises, guiding companies that are engaged in trade processing to move to central, western and north- eastern regions of the country, and supporting the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in developing digital trade.
Wu Haiping, Director General of the General Administration of Customs’ Department of General Operations, said that in order to address the difficulties and bottlenecks faced by foreign-trade enterprises, the customs authority will focus on improving trade facilitation, streamlining import and export logistics, optimizing the business environment at ports, reducing enterprises’ cost burdens and supporting the development of new foreign trade formats. He said that 90,000 companies registered in the first quarter of the year to engage in export and import activities, up 59.8% year-on-year.
According to Zhou Maohua, Analyst at China Everbright Bank, foreign-trade enterprises, especially some small and medium-sized ones, still face high costs for raw materials, difficulties in securing financing, fluctuations in the global foreign exchange market and uncertainties in external demand. “The authorities are expected to take more actions to alleviate the burdens of enterprises and encourage them to strengthen new product research while diversifying import sources and export destinations,” he added.
According to Ning Jizhe, Vice Chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, China should take more actions to stabilize exports to major trading partners, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the European Union, the United States, Japan and South Korea. At the same time, the country must further tap new market potential in economies participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and economies in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, he said.
China’s foreign trade grew 4.8% year-on-year to CNY9.89 trillion in the first quarter of 2023, according to the General Administration of Customs. Zhou Maohua at China Everbright Bank predicted that the country’s exports will likely grow by 6% to 8% year-on-year during the first half of 2023, while the growth of imports will likely be about 0.3% to 0.7%, the China Daily reports.
The Global Times adds that thanks to the measures, China foreign trade could increase by 3% to 5% this year, propelling China's GDP growth to over 5%.
