Orders from the rise to the drop, foreign trade enterprises with what to go to sea "snatch orde
Amid the global pandemic, the foreign trade growth momentum "not seen in nearly 20 years" has hit the pause button in 2022?
From the previous general rise to this year's general decline in orders, China's foreign trade enterprises become the most direct group affected by the economic downturn and the contraction of external demand. In the first eight months of this year, China's foreign trade experienced considerable fluctuations under heavy pressure.
However, in difficult times, foreign trade enterprises have also shown strong resilience, and overall foreign trade has shown a more obvious structural growth trend.
Sun Xiao, spokesman of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and Secretary general of China Chamber of International Commerce, said that in the survey, he deeply felt that the effects of stabilizing the economic package policy and foreign trade policy implementation began to show concentrated in the third quarter, the first half of the year enterprises strongly reported that the freight rates, energy, capital, exchange rate and other issues have been significantly alleviated. "On the whole, the confidence expectations of our foreign trade enterprises have increased significantly, and they continue to show strong resilience."
The growth rate has ups and downs
Data show that the value of foreign trade in the first quarter of this year reached 9.42 trillion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 10.7%, is the seventh consecutive quarter of positive growth in China's foreign trade. However, import and export growth slowed in the first half of this year, hit by the domestic pandemic and supply chain disruptions in the second quarter, but the 9.4 per cent year-on-year growth still beat expectations.
Li Kuiwen, spokesman of the General Administration of Customs and director of the Statistical Analysis Department, said that China's import and export trade showed strong resilience in the first half of the year, with a steady start in the first quarter and a rapid reversal of the downward trend in April in May and June, laying a solid foundation for maintaining stability and improving the quality of foreign trade throughout the year.
"The pandemic will not fundamentally change China's overall advantages in foreign trade." Liang Ming, director of the foreign trade Research Institute under the Ministry of Commerce, told China Business News that the decline in foreign trade in April and May will be made up in the second half of the year when the epidemic situation improves.
In the first seven months of this year, foreign trade growth again returned to double digits, reaching 10.4 percent. In the first eight months of this year, China's foreign trade imports and exports reached 27.3 trillion yuan, up 10.1 percent year on year, although the growth rate was slightly lower than in the first seven months, but still maintained double-digit growth. However, in August alone, foreign trade growth was 7.9 percent lower than in July.
Differentiation and new business opportunities
In this context, different from the usual general growth, the structural growth trend of foreign trade this year is becoming more and more clear, and the differentiation between different industries is significant.
Some enterprises have found new business opportunities from the EU energy crisis. In addition to heating equipment, exports of heat pumps and solar energy also showed strong growth, showing a doubling trend.
Data from the General Administration of Customs show that the export volume of electric heaters and electric blankets increased significantly from June to August this year and rose month by month. In August, the export volume of electric heaters reached 7.32 million and the export volume of electric blankets reached 4.89 million. According to data from Industry Online, in the first seven months of 2022, China's air source heat pump exports increased by 63.7% year-on-year, and both volume and price have improved. It is expected that the annual air source heat pump export scale increased by 54.5% year-on-year. According to Infolink's statistics on Chinese Customs export data in July, China's photovoltaic module export in July hit a high again, reaching 15.7GW, up 121% year on year, and the cumulative module export also reached 94.4GW, up 105% year on year.
In addition to the differentiation of industry performance, this year's foreign trade also shows the growth of import and export to major trading partners such as ASEAN, the European Union and the United States, as well as the rapid growth and increase in the proportion of private enterprises' import and export, and the penetration rate of cross-border e-commerce continues to increase.
Bailout "rush for orders"
"There is increasing pressure on imports and exports to maintain steady growth. It is necessary to introduce a new round of policies to stabilize foreign trade to help enterprises rescue and solve difficulties." Wang Shouwen earlier said at a regular State Council policy briefing.
The executive meeting of The State Council held on September 13 also pointed out that opening-up is China's basic national policy, import and export strongly support stable growth and employment, and we should make greater efforts to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment. The meeting set out measures to further stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment to help consolidate and restore the foundation of the economy. We will promptly set up a number of new comprehensive trial zones for cross-border e-commerce, and give greater support to overseas warehouses. We will improve the efficiency of port collection and transportation and ensure the stability of industrial and supply chains. We will accelerate the launch of key foreign-funded projects. The responsibilities of foreign trade and foreign investment provinces should be consolidated, and relevant departments should strengthen coordination and services.
Growth window period
With the implementation of a series of policies and the initiative of enterprises, the confidence of Chinese foreign traders is gradually recovering.
China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) released on September 29, "the third quarter of foreign trade situation research report" shows that 45.1% of foreign trade enterprises said that the third quarter of foreign trade development confidence gradually recovered; 30.31% of foreign trade enterprises are expected to achieve year-on-year growth in annual trade volume, which is 4.09 percentage points higher than that in the second quarter; Large and medium-sized enterprises are more optimistic about the foreign trade situation for the whole year, while small and micro enterprises' expectations, although weak, have improved from the second quarter.
Alibaba's cross-border index for the September Shopping Festival showed that "double festivals and one match" (Christmas, Black Friday and the World Cup) were the strongest spending forces in the second half of the year. Affected by the economic downturn, global double-section consumption is more inclined to "buy high quality at low price", and buyers pay more attention to IP creativity and flexible customization.
"The window of double-digit growth in foreign trade will last for another year or so." Wei Jianguo analysis said that the window period is hard won, the government and enterprises should seize the time to overcome difficulties, transformation and upgrading. Present a trend of the past 10 years, including China products in global value chain from low-end to high-end development, science and technology, the digital economy of goods and services proportion more and improve, become the main force of China's foreign trade of private enterprises, and penetrate the cross-border electricity supplier and lead to the development of general trade and processing trade, will continue to strengthen over the next 10 years.