Ministry of Commerce: Optimistic Outlook for foreign trade in the second half of the year

On July 19, the State Council Information Office held a press conference to introduce the 2023′s business work and operations in the first half of the year. Li Xingqian, director-general of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce, said that since this year, foreign trade has faced an obvious increase in external challenges. Overall, in the face of severe and complex external environment, the first half of the foreign trade withstood the pressure, showing a strong resilience. There are three standouts:First, it has achieved overall stability in the scale of trade and maintained growth in the volume of trade. From January to June, the import and export of goods in our country exceeded RMB 20 trillion, up 2.1% year on year and 36.7% compared with the first half of 2019. We continue to maintain our position as the leading country in trade in goods. Market share is steadily increasing. According to the latest figures from the WTO, global exports fell 1.6 percent in the first quarter from the same period a year earlier, while China’s international market share of exports rose 14 percent, up 0.3 percentage points from the first quarter of last year. Monitoring also shows that, in the second quarter, China’s export share of the international market still maintained a steady rising trend. China’s export market is diversified and its products are abundant, effectively offsetting the impact of weak external demand and cyclical decline of some products. The current performance of China’s foreign trade is in line with expectations.

Second, we have achieved continuous improvement in the quality of trade. In the first six months of this year, emerging markets’ share of imports and exports rose 1.8 percentage points from a year earlier to 63.5 percent. Imports and exports to FTA partners grew by 2.4 per cent and to “Belt and Road” countries by 9.8 per cent, both faster than overall export growth. The export products are upgrading in quality, high-quality, high-technology, high value-added products strong growth. Electric passenger cars, solar cells and lithium-ion batteries added 1.8 percent to overall export growth in the first half of the year. Foreign trade format is also innovative development. The Ministry of Commerce copied and promoted 30 good practice cases of new forms of foreign trade to the whole country. In the first half of this year, cross-border e-commerce exports grew by 19.9% , maintaining the momentum of rapid development.

Third, foreign trade effectively serves the overall economic development. Foreign trade continued to drive the recovery of the national economy. Foreign trade directly and indirectly led to employment of 190 million people. From January to June, 35,000 foreign trade enterprises were added to the list. In terms of ensuring the supply of the domestic market, we have actively expanded the import of food, energy resources and excellent consumer goods to meet the needs of domestic production and living. In expanding opening up, to promote the RCEP for the 15 signatories to fully take effect, the internal and external circulation more unimpeded.Li Xingqian said that our country’s import and export growth rate dropped in May and June, which is a direct reflection of the weak world economic recovery in the trade area. The main reasons include weak external demand, cyclical downtrend of electronic and information industry, a significant rise in import and export base last year, import and export prices, etc. . Nevertheless, we should also see the foreign trade operation is accumulating new vitality, although the import and export growth in May and June year-on-year decline, but month-on-month growth. The traffic department monitors the national port foreign trade cargo and container throughput is also growing, the actual cargo in and out is still relatively active. Therefore, we remain optimistic about the prospects of foreign trade in the second half of the yea