Foreign trade recovery is expected to be high and steady

8.47 trillion yuan, an increase of 29.2% year on year -- The report card for China's trade in goods in the first quarter was released on April 13. For such a volume and increase, how should we look? Looking forward to the future, how can the steady quality of foreign trade rise?

Good - this is the first signal sent by the first-quarter foreign trade data.

How to speak? On a year-on-year basis, China's foreign trade increased by 29.2% in the first quarter. If compared with the same period in 2018 and 2019, the increase would be 25.3 percent and 20.5 percent respectively.

From the month-on-month point of view, China's import and export growth in March reached 25%, among which exports and imports increased by 16.8% and 35.2% respectively.

In the first quarter of this year, compared with the fourth quarter of last year, imports and exports fell by 7.1%.

"It should be noted that due to the traditional Spring Festival holiday in China, the volume of foreign trade in the first quarter is usually lower than that in the fourth quarter of last year, which is also normal." Li Kuiwen, a spokesman for the General Administration of Customs and head of the statistics and analysis department, said that from 2016 to 2020, imports and exports in the first quarter both saw double-digit declines from the previous quarter, but this year's drop in the first quarter was the smallest in recent years.

"This also further confirms the favorable situation of China's foreign trade in the first quarter of this year." "He added.

Under the favorable general trend, China's foreign trade shows many bright spots. For example, private enterprises have become more resilient and dynamic. In the first quarter, the import and export of China's private enterprises reached 3.95 trillion yuan, an increase of 42.7%, accounting for 46.7% of China's total foreign trade value and an increase of 4.4 percentage points over the same period last year. They continued to maintain their position as China's largest foreign trade operator.

"We stopped work during the epidemic last year and invested more than 20 million yuan in technology upgrading and transformation, and these investments are reaping returns." Yuan Zhiyou, chairman of Sichuan Jiayi Co., told reporters that the company's exports grew more than 20 percent in the first quarter and its orders were strong.

In recent years, China has made new achievements in diversifying its foreign trade. According to customs statistics, China's import and export in the first quarter increased by 26.1%, 36.4%, 61.3% and 20.8% respectively for its top four trading partners, ASEAN, the European Union, the United States and Japan. In addition, China's imports and exports to One Belt And One Road countries and RCEP trading partners increased by 21.4% and 22.9% respectively.

"We have completed the ratification of the RCEP and become the first country to ratify the Agreement. With the formal implementation of the RCEP in the future, China's foreign trade potential is expected to be more stimulated." "Said Zhuang Rui, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics' National Institute for Opening-up.

It is worth mentioning that, as an emerging form of trade, cross-border e-commerce has continued the good development trend of last year and become one of the main forces for the steady growth of foreign trade. According to the preliminary estimate of the customs, the import and export of cross-border e-commerce in China reached 419.5 billion yuan in the first quarter, up 46.5% year on year.

When the trend is positive, we cannot ignore the challenges. It should be noted that the development of foreign trade is still faced with many destabilizing and uncertain factors, such as the uncertainty of the epidemic, the instability of the international industrial chain and supply chain, and the complexity of the international environment.

Micro-entities also face difficulties and challenges. For example, high shipping rates and insufficient shipping capacity affect enterprises' receiving of orders. Raw material prices rise, resulting in higher production costs; Some areas of labor difficulties are more prominent.

"China's foreign trade has maintained positive year-on-year growth for three consecutive quarters. This trend is expected to continue in the coming period, but the specific trend needs to be further observed." Li Kuiwen said that in general, there are many favorable factors for China's foreign trade operation in the coming period, but there are also many external challenges, and there is still a long way to go to stabilize the growth of foreign trade.

Gao Feng, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, said earlier that the ministry will help foreign trade companies stabilize orders and expand the market by identifying new bases for foreign trade transformation and upgrading, fostering processing trade industrial parks and building national import trade promotion innovation demonstration zones to expand the scale of imports and improve the quality and efficiency of related industries.

Experts, scholars and enterprises interviewed believe that to promote the steady growth of China's foreign trade volume, we need to maintain the continuity, stability and sustainability of policies, do not make "sharp changes" in policies, study and introduce more targeted policy measures to stabilize foreign trade, especially to support the development of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises.