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Recently, Zou Zhiwu, member of the Party Committee and Deputy Director of the General Administration of Customs, stated at the 2018 National Forum with the theme of "New Era · Reform and Opening Up" held by the China News Agency that the growth and development of my country's foreign trade is precisely since the reform and opening up., my country has achieved historic changes and achieved the best epitome of historic achievements. Over the past 40 years, the scale of China's foreign trade has jumped step by step, steadily moving forward from a big trading country to a powerful trading country; the transformation and upgrading of China's foreign trade commodity structure has gradually jumped from made in China to created in China.

The scale of foreign trade jumped step by step

Zou Zhiwu said that the work of my country's customs is at the forefront of reform and opening up. It should be said that it has witnessed and experienced the miraculous growth of my country's foreign trade since the reform and opening up.

Zou Zhiwu introduced that in the past 40 years, the scale of my country's foreign trade has jumped step by step, and it has steadily moved forward from a major trading country to a powerful trading country. In 1999, my country's foreign trade ranked among the top 10 in global trade for the first time. After we joined the WTO in 2001, my country's opening to the outside world should be said to have entered an all-round, multi-level, and wide-ranging historical stage. In 2004, the total value of China's foreign trade reached the level of trillion US dollars for the first time, and doubled again in 2007, exceeding 2 trillion US dollars. From 1 trillion to 2 trillion, it took only three years for our country to achieve such a leap, while it took the United States and Germany eight years to achieve the same leap. In 2009, my country's exports surpassed Germany to become the world's largest exporter. In 2013, it surpassed the United States to become the world's largest country in goods trade. In the past 40 years, the total value of my country's imports and exports of goods has increased by 198 times, accounting for only 0.77 per cent of global imports and exports, from a negligible start to 11.48 per cent now.

Zou Zhiwu further pointed out that in the past 40 years, the influence of my country's foreign trade has gradually increased, which has injected strong impetus into China and global economic growth. Foreign trade is the propeller of economic growth. The average growth rate of my country's foreign trade in 40 years is 14.5, which is significantly higher than the same period. The average annual growth rate of my country's GDP is 11.9, which is the level in US dollars. As one of the troika driving the economy, export growth has strongly promoted the expansion of domestic industrial production.

In the past 40 years, China's international market share of exports has risen from 0.8 per cent in 1978 to 12.8 per cent in 2017, and China now has the largest share of exports of 1400 commodities in the world. Foreign trade is a stabilizer for expanding employment. At present, my country's foreign trade directly or indirectly drives nearly 0.2 billion in employment. Foreign trade is also a balancer of international payments. Our trade surplus continues to expand and has played an important role in increasing foreign exchange reserves.

Zou Zhiwu introduced that in 2005, the foreign trade surplus exceeded US $100 billion, and in 2015 the surplus reached a record US $593.9 billion. During the same period, my country's foreign exchange reserves also rose sharply from less than US $1 trillion to more than US $3 trillion. So for global economic growth, China's foreign trade has become one of the most important forces leading the growth of world trade. Whether it is a developed economy or a new economy that is increasingly dependent on China's trade, we have become the largest trading partner of 130 countries and a well-deserved mainstay of world trade.

Transformation and Upgrading of Foreign Trade Commodity Structure

Zou Zhiwu said that over the past 40 years, the transformation and upgrading of China's foreign trade commodity structure has gradually jumped from made in China to created in China. In the first 30 years of reform and opening up, China's exports have grown from scratch, from existence to abundance, made in China and sold to the world. In the past 10 years, my country's foreign trade has gradually moved from a stage of rapid development to a stage of high-quality development. China's creation has gradually emerged, and exports have gradually got rid of the dependence on resources and labor, and export-leading industries have gradually shifted from traditional labor-intensive industries such as light industry and textiles, upgrade to capital and technology-intensive industries such as equipment manufacturing and high-tech industries. China's high-speed rail, aerospace, communication equipment and other high value-added products continue to expand overseas markets with outstanding performance and steady pace.

Zou Zhiwu said that in 1986, my country's largest export products were textiles and clothing. In 1995, the export of mechanical and electrical products replaced textiles and clothing for the first time and became the largest export commodity. This marked the shift from labor-intensive to capital and technology-intensive. In 2003, the export of mechanical and electrical products accounted for half of China's total export value for the first time. In 2011, the export of mechanical and electrical products exceeded the trillion US dollar mark. In 2017, the export of mechanical and electrical products increased to 1.32 trillion US dollars, accounting for nearly 60% of China's total export, reaching the highest point in history.

Over the past 40 years, the main body of China's foreign trade has blossomed, from the original state-owned enterprises to the rapid development of foreign-invested enterprises, and then to private enterprises to catch up. Before 1992, the main body of my country's foreign trade operations was only state-owned enterprises and foreign-invested enterprises. In 1993, private enterprises began to enter the historical stage. In 1998, foreign-invested enterprises surpassed state-owned enterprises to become my country's largest foreign trade import and export business entity.

Since 2008, the performance of private enterprises has become increasingly prominent. From 2008 to 2017, the total import and export value of China's private enterprises increased from US $536 billion to US $1581.5 billion, with an average annual growth rate of 12.8 percent. This growth rate is 7.4 percentage points higher than the overall average annual growth rate of China's foreign trade import and export in the same period, accounting for a substantial increase in the proportion of national import and export from 20.9 percent to 38.5 percent.