Exports rose 11.6% in August, backed by new growth engines such as services
Despite global economic uncertainties amid the COVID-19 pandemic,
China's foreign trade has maintained better-than-expected performance
since the second quarter of this year, with trade in services,
cross-border e-commerce and private sector transactions emerging as new
growth engines, according to government officials and economic analysts.
In August alone, the country's exports surged by 11.6 percent, with
imports dipping only 0.5 percent, according to the General
Administration of Customs on Monday.
The easing of lockdowns by China's major trading partners has helped
drive China's export growth recently, while the country's surging
shipments to members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and
exports of anti-epidemic materials also powered the growth momentum last
month, said Yu Jianlong, secretary-general of the China Chamber of
International Commerce.
China's foreign trade with ASEAN, now the country's largest trading
partner, jumped 7 percent year-on-year to 2.93 trillion yuan ($428.9
billion) from January to August. The country's trade with the European
Union, its second-largest trading partner, grew by 1.4 percent on a
yearly basis to 2.81 trillion yuan during the same period.
China is fully able to obtain a stable growth rate in foreign trade
and help facilitate global economic recovery this year, thanks to the
sustainable and stable improvement in trading activities in recent
months and the country's fast-growing trade in services and other
business sectors, such as e-commerce, according to Chen Wenling, chief
economist at the Beijing-based China Center for International Economic
Exchanges.
China's total foreign trade volume of goods reached 20.05 trillion
yuan in the first eight months, down 0.6 percent year-on-year. The drop
narrowed by 1.1 percentage points compared with the decline from January
to July, according to Customs officials.
Whether this growth momentum can be sustained depends to a large
extent on efforts in other parts of the world to contain the pandemic.
If a second wave of the contagion occurs, it will definitely delay their
economic recovery and affect China's external demand, said Sang
Baichuan, an economics professor at the University of International
Business and Economics in Beijing.
Fortunately, China's private companies, with more innovation input,
are developing fast and taking a more important role in boosting the
country's foreign trade, according to Sang.
Customs officials said the imports and exports of China's private
companies reached 9.21 trillion yuan from January to August, up 8.5
percent year-on-year, accounting for 45.9 percent of the country's total
foreign trade volume.
Zhang Wenxing, a production manager at Guizhou Zhuyun Paper Product
Co in Guizhou province, said that exports as a proportion of his
company's total business had risen from 70 percent to 90 percent in the
first eight months of this year.
Due to the spread of the COVID-19, as many foreign manufacturers in
the paper business have either suspended their production or shut down
their factories to avoid health risks, the Chinese firm saw its global
orders surge 30 percent this year. The company has its factories booked
through November.
"Compared with tissue and other paper products, toilet rolls are in
urgent need and have become the majority of our products to be shipped
to overseas markets such as the United Kingdom, the United States,
Singapore and Australia this year," Zhang said.
"Supported by strong market demand, we have gained more price
bargaining power and gradually cultivated our own brands in overseas
markets," Zhang said. He said the company used to rely heavily on making
products to be sold under other brands.
Bjorn Rosengren, CEO of technology group ABB, a Swiss-Swedish
multinational corporation, said that in addition to putting more
resources into China's services trade sector, the company will start to
run new robotics factories in Shanghai next year. The plant's products
will not only serve the Chinese market, but also be exported.
ABB has established a major innovation and manufacturing hub in
Xiamen, Fujian province, to further integrate its local businesses. The
site is able to provide support services such as help desks and material
management to ABB companies in China, Japan and South Korea, he said.
Despite a promising picture ahead for the country's foreign trade,
Gao Lingyun, a research fellow at the Institute of World Economics and
Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, suggested the
necessity to fend off risks caused by rising protectionism for the rest
of the year.
With many countries still struggling to stimulate their exports and
consumption, protectionism is harmful to the export-oriented companies,
multinationals and the stabilization of financial markets, Gao said.
Since the pandemic has hit developing countries' economies harder
than those of developed countries, Gao said that China needs to figure
out more measures to stabilize trade ties with Africa and Latin American
countries, and pay attention to the relocation of its labor-intensive
industries to other markets in the next stage.