The head of the Foreign Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce talks about China's foreign trade from January to July 2019

Release time:

2019-08-19

Since the beginning of this year, the external environment facing China's foreign trade development has undergone profound changes. The Party Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to foreign trade work. On July 10, the executive meeting of the State Council determined measures to further stabilize foreign trade to expand opening up and help stabilize growth and employment. The Ministry of Commerce, together with all localities and departments, pays close attention to the implementation of policies, optimizes the layout of the international market, vigorously cultivates new forms of foreign trade, and creates a good market environment. The vast number of enterprises to meet the difficulties, the endogenous power is constantly increasing. From January to July, the development of foreign trade maintained a steady and qualitative trend.

The value of imports and exports in July hit a monthly high this year, pushing the scale to expand steadily. In July, imports and exports of 2.74 trillion yuan and exports of 1.53 trillion yuan were the highest in a single month this year. From January to July, imports and exports were 17.41 trillion yuan, up 4.2 percent. Among them, exports were 9.48 trillion yuan, up 6.7 percent; imports were 7.93 trillion yuan, up 1.3 percent; and the trade surplus was 1.55 trillion yuan, up 47.4 percent.

The structure is continuously optimized. First, the international market layout is more optimized. The level of trade facilitation with countries along the "Belt and Road" has continued to improve, with imports and exports increasing by 10.2, driving overall import and export growth by 2.8 percentage points. Imports and exports with traditional trading partners the EU and ASEAN increased by 10.8 per cent and 11.3 per cent respectively. In the first half of the year, the import and export of 25 trading partners that signed free trade agreements with China increased by 3.8. Second, the domestic regional layout is more balanced. Exports in the central and western regions increased by 13.8, 7.1 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate, and their share increased by 1.1 percentage points to 17.5. Third, the status of private enterprises as the main export force has been consolidated. In the first half of the year, the number of private enterprises with import and export performance reached 336000, an increase of 8.5 percent, accounting for nearly 80 percent. From January to July, the export of private enterprises increased by 14.2, accounting for 50.9 per cent, driving export growth by 6.8 percentage points. Fourth, the structure of export commodities is constantly upgrading. The export of mechanical and electrical products increased by 6.1, 0.8 percentage points faster than that in January-June. Among them, the export of high-tech, high-quality, and high-value-added products such as integrated circuits, metal processing machine tools, excavators, and medical equipment has maintained double-digit growth. The export of seven categories of labor-intensive products, such as textiles and clothing, maintained a competitive advantage, increasing by 7.8, 1.1 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate, and driving export growth by 1.5 percentage points. Fifth, the role of general trade in stimulating exports is more significant. General trade exports increased by 10.1, driving overall export growth by 5.8 percentage points.

Kinetic energy conversion is accelerated. Since the beginning of this year, all departments and localities have increased policy support and actively cultivated new trade formats and new models. The construction of the third batch of 22 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones was accelerated. In the first half of the year, the import and export of cross-border e-commerce retail increased rapidly. The first batch of second-hand cars were successfully exported in July, and the export scale is expected to expand rapidly in the second half of the year. In the next step, the bonded maintenance project of processing trade will continue to be implemented, further attracting the transfer of processing, manufacturing and production services with higher technical level and greater value-added content to China.

(Source: Department of Commerce)

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