On October 15, the 134th Canton Fair opened. This Canton Fair has significantly increased in terms of number of attendees, number of purchasing groups, total exhibition area, and participating companies. Guangzhou is an important window for my country’s foreign trade and an important international trade hub city. The Canton Fair is an important “barometer” and “wind vane” for observing and judging my country’s foreign trade situation. The scale of this Canton Fair has hit a new high, which is mutually confirmed with the relevant data released recently. It reflects the gradual recovery of global external demand and also shows that my country’s foreign trade has gradually shown a stable and positive trend.
The outstanding feature of this Canton Fair is that “quantity + structure” are both good. In terms of quantity, there are nearly 29,000 exhibitors on the online platform of this Canton Fair, 2,115 more than the previous session. The level of intelligence and convenience of the online platform has been continuously improved, and 101 functions have been optimized. So far, exhibitors on the online platform have uploaded about 2.72 million products, including about 700,000 new products. At the same time, the number of purchasing groups increased, with 97 industrial and commercial organizations from Europe, America, Asia, and Africa participating in the conference. The number of purchasing groups increased by 86.5% compared with the same period of the previous session. Leading companies such as the Fortune Global 500 and the Global Retail Top 250 actively participated in the conference, and 140 leading multinational companies confirmed their participation. At this Canton Fair, buyers from key markets actively participated. The number of pre-registered buyers from Europe and the United States increased by 8.6% compared with the same period of the previous session. Buyers from countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative increased by 11.2%, and buyers from RCEP countries increased by 13.8%.
From a structural point of view, the important products of the first phase of the exhibition cover consumer electronics, information products, new energy, new materials, general machinery, intelligent manufacturing, and automobiles. Relying on the country’s complete manufacturing categories and rising total factor productivity, technological progress has further improved the quality of exported goods, and more high-tech and technically complex goods are favored by importers around the world. This is also an important reason why China’s exports can withstand the pressure and buck the trend in the current environment where world external demand is still weak. The commodity export structure of this Canton Fair continues to be optimized, which shows from the side that China regards manufacturing as the main driving force for high-quality economic development, continues to practice a new industrialization development path, and takes the vibrant domestic cycle as the main body to drive the international cycle to continue to improve. The grand strategy has achieved positive results.
Since the beginning of this year, the world’s political and economic situation has become increasingly complex, and the Federal Reserve has continued to tighten financial conditions, which has severely dragged down the global economy. Unstable recovery, sluggish external demand and trade frictions have had a certain impact on my country’s stable foreign trade growth. According to data from the General Administration of Customs, in the first three quarters, my country’s total import and export value was 30.8 trillion yuan, a slight decrease of only 0.2% year-on-year. In the complex environment of domestic macroeconomic performance in the early stage, which was repeatedly compounded by weak external demand, China’s foreign trade still withstood the pressure and fully implemented a package of policies to stabilize foreign trade. At the same time, it effectively overcome the impact of last year’s high base and pushed the overall situation to achieve stability and improvement. . It should be said that it is not easy to achieve such results.
This Canton Fair has achieved “double excellence” in terms of quantity and structure, which further indicates that my country’s foreign trade situation will continue to pick up and improve in the fourth quarter, and the stimulating effect of external demand on the entire economy will gradually increase. At the same time, a series of prosperity indexes have steadily rebounded, indicating that my country’s exports will continue to improve in the future, and foreign trade companies’ expectations for the foreign trade situation in the fourth quarter are improving and their confidence is growing. As China’s business environment continues to converge towards high international standards, the construction of free trade zones is achieving practical results, digitalization is closely integrated with cross-border e-commerce and logistics, the proportion of RMB payment in international trade continues to increase, and risk hedging tools are becoming more widespread. With the use of export guarantee financing and the protection of export guarantee financing, the current trend of foreign trade is stable and improving. Looking forward to the later period, my country will also expand the import scale of high-quality products and advanced technologies, and continue to promote the optimization and upgrading of foreign trade structure and the balance of international payments.