China's foreign trade breaks record, benefits world

By Qiu Haifeng

China's foreign trade rose 3.4 percent year-on-year in 2019 to 31.54 trillion yuan ($4.6 trillion), reaching a record high.

With steady growth and better quality of foreign trade, China is expected to remain the largest trader of goods in the world.

China's foreign trade was faced with mounting external challenges last year. The World Trade Organization (WTO) slashed its global trade growth forecast for 2019 to the weakest level in a decade.

The Global Trade Alert (GTA), which provides independent monitoring of policies that affect world commerce, pointed out that the trade and investment policies and measures introduced by countries in the first 10 months of 2019 saw the sharpest decline in 7 years.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development warned that the continuous trade tensions were a major factor in affecting the world economy.

Bucking the trend of the decline in global economy, China secured record-high foreign trade, sharing its development benefits with the rest of the world and generating new opportunities for the sluggish world market.

From November 5 to 10, 2019, China hosted the second China International Import Expo (CIIE), attracting 181 countries, regions as well as international organizations.

During the second CIIE, $71.13 billion worth of tentative deals were reached for one-year purchases of goods and services, 23 percent higher than that of the previous year.

Then on November 11, China's biggest online shopping holiday, more than 20,000 brands from over 200 countries and regions joined the grand online sales.

China has speeded up in stimulating the potential of domestic demand for increased imports. Last year, the country's imports climbed to 14.31 trillion yuan, the highest on record.

With concrete actions, China has made it clear to the world that its initiative to expand imports is a future-oriented step taken to embrace the world and promote common development.

Meanwhile, China's exports grew 5 percent year on year to 17.23 trillion yuan last year, bringing high-quality products to more emerging markets.

Export with main trading partners such as the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) maintained stable growth while that with countries along the Belt and Road and emerging markets like Africa and Latin America has increased rapidly.

The export of high value-added products maintained momentum. Export of integrated circuits, semiconductor devices, solar cells and etc. registered a growth rate of over 25 percent.

Besides, the export of products made by Chinese brands reached 2.9 trillion yuan, up by 12 percent. The volume accounted for nearly 17 percent of the total export value, 1.1 percentage points higher than that in 2018.

China will continue to share its development dividends with other countries. In recent years, China has rolled out policies to cut taxes and administrative fees to support the development of economy.

Starting from the beginning of 2020, it began to implement provisional import tax rates that are lower than the most-favored-nation tariff rates for over 850 commodities, more than those in the last year, enabling more high-quality goods access to the Chinese market.

China has also optimized the business environment of the ports and facilitated cross-border trade.

As private enterprises have become the biggest contributor to China's foreign trade, the country, with a complete industrial system and increasing technological innovation, is believed to form the world's largest domestic market.

All these above will allow China to unleash the huge potential for foreign trade and inject stable and positive energy into the world economy.

Standing at a new historical starting point, China will open its door only wider to the world and continue sharing its benefits with other countries.

(Qiu Haifeng is a commentator with People's Daily Overseas Edition.)

Visitors at the food and agricultural products exhibition area of the second CIIE (Photo by Weng Qiyu, People's Daily Online)