As the world's second-largest economy that successfully controlled the new crown pneumonia epidemic and took the lead in resuming work and production, China's increasingly active economic activities have added vitality and brightness to the gloomy world economy. Many Western companies lamented that the Chinese market made up for their losses.
Recently, the American "Wall Street Journal" published an article that with the recovery of China's consumer economy, many Western companies' sales in China have bucked the trend, not only offsetting the loss of their domestic sales decline to a certain extent, but also making China a global company "Safe haven."
For a long time, China has been an important sales market for Western companies. Faced with the continued spread of the epidemic around the world, the boosting role of the Chinese market to the world economy has been further demonstrated. In the second-quarter financial reports announced not long ago, some internationally renowned brands said that the Chinese market has allowed them to survive very difficult months.
The total sales of American sports and leisure brand Skechers in the second quarter fell 42% year-on-year, but it achieved an 11.5% growth in the Chinese market. Skechers CEO David Weinberg said, "China provides a sample of recovery, stability and growth."
In April, the Economist Intelligence Unit predicted that China's retail sales will not increase until 2021, but now this forecast has been updated to achieve an annual growth rate of 1% in the third quarter and 2.4% in the fourth quarter.
In the field of international trade, China's economic recovery has also brought positive signals to Western countries.
"The stability of China's foreign trade has provided an important impetus for the recovery of world trade, and German companies will also benefit from it." said Joachim Lang, managing director of the Federation of German Industries. Data show that, driven by the boost in Chinese demand, German exports have recently achieved two consecutive monthly increases. In June this year, German exports to China increased by 15.4% year-on-year to 8.3 billion euros.
Public investment such as China's infrastructure has also driven Japan's exports. The trade statistics for June released by Japan’s Ministry of Finance recently showed that Japan’s exports for the month fell by 26.2% year-on-year, but exports to China rebounded significantly, with exports only down 0.2% from the same period last year.
In the first half of this year, China-Europe freight trains ran "acceleration" against the wind, and both the number of lines opened and the volume of goods sent increased significantly year-on-year, playing an important role in international anti-epidemic cooperation. Facing the challenge of the epidemic, China vigorously carried out international cooperation in the fight against the epidemic, supported the prevention and control of the epidemic in relevant countries, and made positive contributions to the stability of the global industrial chain supply chain.
"Trade between China and Germany is rapidly recovering. There are 45 to 60 China-Europe trains between Duisburg and China every week. This number has set a new record." City Finance Director of Duisburg, Germany Martin Mulak said.
In June, Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Commerce Zhu Lin tried to "carry goods" live broadcast of Thai fruits on a Chinese e-commerce platform. After a live broadcast, nearly 5,000 durians, 20,000 green coconuts, 1,500 sweet shrimps, and 3,000 were sold. Bag of fragrant rice and 1500 pieces of net red fried chicken. Zhu Lin said with emotion: "The Thai government attaches great importance to promoting trade between China and Thailand through cross-border e-commerce platforms. During the epidemic, the export volume of Thai products through cross-border e-commerce platforms has been growing steadily. I admire China's cross-border e-commerce Achievements and leading technology in the field."
New "games" such as live streaming and delivery of goods are setting off a new trend around the world, bringing closer ties between countries. The British "Financial Times" wrote a few days ago that China's cross-border retail e-commerce platform AliExpress is copying the already very mature domestic e-commerce live delivery model to overseas, promoting the construction and popularization of the global social e-commerce ecosystem.
In an unfavorable environment such as rising protectionism, downturn in the world economy, and shrinking global markets, the value of the Chinese market, Chinese innovation, and China's role to the global supply chain has become more prominent.
The 2020 membership survey released by the US-China Business Council on August 11 shows that despite the tension between the two countries under the new crown pneumonia epidemic, nearly 70% of the interviewed US companies are optimistic about the business prospects of the Chinese market in the next five years. Based on the "long-term confidence" in the Chinese market, 87% of the interviewed US companies indicated that they do not plan to move their production lines out of China.
In an interview with the Economic Daily reporter, ASEAN Deputy Secretary-General for Economic Affairs Lilo said that the global economic recovery will largely depend on China's economic recovery. What is gratifying is that China's economy achieved 3.2% growth in the second quarter. Next, it depends on how other economies cooperate with China, where the economy is the first to recover. (Economic Daily reporter Xie Fei, Su Haihe, Xu Xu Yuanyang)