Foreign trade is still under pressure, but there are some positive signs.
According to the latest official figures, the value of China’s exports and imports in August was still falling compared with the same month last year, but the rate of decline has narrowed and the economy grew by 3.9 per cent month-on-month. Exports rose 1.2 per cent and imports 7.6 per cent.
China’s trade with ASEAN rose 1.6 per cent year-on-year in the first eight months amid overall global trade weakness. China-us trade, which has been falling this year, is also showing signs of improving. In the first eight months, the total value of china-us trade fell 8.7% year-on-year, 0.9 percentage points less than in the previous seven months.
Among them, China’s exports to the US fell 11.7% year-on-year, the decline was 1.3 percentage points less than in the previous seven months.
Export growth of China’s machinery and electrical products fell further in the first eight months compared with the same period last year, according to official data, while the growth of exports by private enterprises, known as“Stabilizers” of foreign trade, also slowed.
All these show that China’s foreign trade situation is still serious. In addition, the United States continued to promote“Friendly offshore outsourcing”“Offshore outsourcing”, the order to Mexico and other countries to transfer to China’s exports also brought some pressure.
Mei Xinyu, a researcher at the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China Institute for International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told China News Service that it would not be easy for China’s foreign trade to buck the trend this year, given the overall downturn in global trade. At this stage, a country’s foreign trade competitiveness is judged more by its international market share and the export of emerging industries, which represent the future direction of technological development, than by its trade growth rate.
Mei Xinyu believes that the resilience and competitiveness of China’s foreign trade have been further highlighted in the“Headwinds” of the international environment, and that China’s export share in the global market can remain stable this year, it may even improve further.