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China's foreign trade will maintain stable growth this year thanks to
its reliable supply chains, efficient manufacturing operation and major
trading partners' better-than-expected economic performance, officials
and analysts said on Monday. The recent signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
agreement, together with the country's new round of opening-up and
reform, will also put foreign trade growth on firmer footing amid the
COVID-19 pandemic, experts said. Because of China's early recovery from the pandemic and the
government's supportive policies, the nation's foreign trade sustained
upward momentum in the third quarter of this year, with notable growth
and improved structure, said Zhang Yongjun, a researcher at the China
Center for International Economic Exchanges in Beijing. The country's foreign trade expanded 7.8 percent year-on-year in
November, with exports jumping 14.9 percent on a yearly basis and
imports declining 0.8 percent, Customs data showed. Wang Dan, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank (China), said China's
export performance once again beat market expectations, mainly due to
the holiday demand surge from the developed markets. Apart from helping to mend disrupted global supply chains, China's
soaring foreign trade will effectively fuel its economic growth and make
the country the first major economy to recover from the impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic, said Yang Zhengwei, deputy director-general of the
Ministry of Commerce's Department of International Trade and Economic
Affairs. Because of the complementary industrial structures between China and
the European Union and enhanced business ties driven by factors such as
the accelerated pace of China-EU investment treaty talks and booming
China-Europe freight train services, China replaced the United States as
the EU's largest trade partner in the third quarter, reflecting the
resilience and potential of bilateral economic and trade ties, the
Foreign Ministry said last week. China's foreign trade with the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, its largest trading partner, jumped 6.7 percent year-on-year to
4.24 trillion yuan from January to November, while its trade volume
with the EU, its second-largest trading partner, grew 4.7 percent
year-on-year to 4.05 trillion yuan. Meanwhile, China's trade in goods with the US soared 6.9 percent year-on-year to 3.65 trillion yuan. In addition to Chinese exporters, many multinational companies such
as Siemens, Caterpillar, Toyota Motor and Schneider Electric have
pledged to enhance productivity or export more products made from their
plants in China to other parts of the world over the next few years, as
they think highly of China's response to the coronavirus pandemic and
its continuous efforts to facilitate trade and investment activities. Sunvim Group, a textile product manufacturer in Shandong province,
said its business outlook was cloudy in the first quarter of the year,
when COVID-19 started to cripple the global economy, and then took a
turn for the better starting in April, since many overseas manufacturers
in that sector have either suspended their production or shut their
factories to avoid health risks. Although Sunvim's towel exports to Japan accounted for 53 percent of
China's total towel exports to the country in the first three quarters,
it paid tariffs to Japanese Customs and meanwhile saw its competitors in
Vietnam paying zero tariffs to ship their goods to Japan, due to the
two countries' free trade agreement. Xiao Maochang, Sunvim's chairman, said this situation will change
greatly as member countries of the RCEP trade deal will aim to cut
tariffs to zero in the coming decade.
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