(Economic Observation) Is Sino-Vietnamese Trade Growing Strongly? Is Vietnam's "World Factory" Road Smooth?

  China News Agency, Nanning, April 23 (Reporter Zhou Qun) According to data released by the Nanning Customs on the 23rd, Guangxi, which is adjacent to Vietnam, imported and exported to Vietnam 32.82 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year. This figure accounts for about 12.8% of China-Vietnam's total imports and exports.

  In the first quarter, China's imports and exports to Vietnam increased by 18% to 255.7 billion yuan. Compared with China ’s imports and exports to the European Union and the United States, which fell by 10.4% and 18.3%, respectively, China ’s imports and exports to Vietnam increased very impressively.

  The epidemic failed to stop China-Vietnam trade from growing against the trend

  The General Administration of Customs of China recently announced that ASEAN replaced EU as China's largest trading partner for the first time in the first quarter of this year, and its total import and export with China reached 991.34 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.1%. Among the ASEAN member countries, Vietnam's import and export volume to China ranks first, accounting for 25.8%.

  Since the beginning of the year, affected by the epidemic, some trade channels between China and Vietnam have been temporarily suspended. Since the end of February, customs clearance at the port has gradually resumed after the meeting between the two countries. At the Pingxiang port in Guangxi, the most important port on the Sino-Vietnamese border, there have been more than 600 daily freight vehicles, with a maximum of 1,400. At the Yunnan Hekou port, the daily freight vehicles have also reached 900 daily, gradually returning to the pre-epidemic level.

  Xie Jin, director of the Nanning Customs Statistics and Analysis Division, told reporters that during the epidemic, the new land and sea corridor in the west and the China-Europe trains operated smoothly. In the first quarter, Beibu Gulf Port (Qinzhou, Beihai, Fangcheng Port) imported and exported 69,000 containers, which increased by 6.5% against the trend. In March, the import and export of Guangxi railway transportation increased by 1.8 times. The Pingxiang railway port has played an important role in the import and export of the southern railway and the new channel of the southern railway.

  The analysis of the customs department shows that the increase in the import and export of mechanical and electrical products, mainly integrated circuits, and the decline in the import and export of labor-intensive products have become a major feature of Sino-Vietnamese trade in the first quarter. At the same time, many important agricultural products of Vietnam face challenges to China. , Exports of fruits and vegetables to China fell.

  Undertaking industry transfer Vietnam is hot

  In the past 10 years, Vietnam has maintained an annual GDP growth of about 7%, the pace of integration into the internationalization process has been accelerated, and it has opened up the European and American markets. In the context of the Sino-US trade war, industrial transfer has made investment in Vietnam hot.

  Since the trade friction between China and the United States, many toys, furniture, electronics, home appliances and other industries that withdrew from the Chinese market have chosen Vietnam, and companies such as Samsung and Foxconn have continued to increase investment in Vietnam.

  In 2019, Vietnam's total imports and exports reached US $ 517 billion, an increase of 7.6% over the previous year. "This is a very impressive number, which fully reflects the growth and sustainable development of international trade in Vietnam's economic structure." Chen Junying, Minister of Industry and Trade of Vietnam, said.

  After the outbreak of the epidemic in the world, based on the consideration of diversifying supply chain risks, some companies are also planning supply chain transfers, and Vietnam will face new opportunities to undertake industrial transfers.

  Vietnam's "world factory" road does not seem to be so smooth

  China has gradually grown into a "world factory" over the past 30 years, and Vietnam is expected to be the next "world factory" by some people.

  For China, Vietnam's comparative advantage has two main advantages: one is the price advantage of production factors, especially the price advantage of labor, and the other is the advantage of tariffs when trading with other countries.

  Vietnam ’s small size and large influx of manufacturing are pushing up prices of factors such as land and labor. Vietnam has no complete industrial system, so the manufacturing capacity transferred to Vietnam is more of a "chimeric relationship" with China's supply chain.

  It took China 30 to 40 years to build a complete, professional, low-cost, and efficient supply chain. This is not only China's many years of efforts, but also a huge market to support it.

  Experts here analyzed that most of the transfer to Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries are labor-intensive assembly plants that involve the final process. The upstream and midstream links are still in China. Simply transferring the factory without transferring the industrial chain cannot constitute a substantial transfer.

  Felix, editor-in-chief of the Vietnam Economic Annual Report and dean of the Economics and Policy Research Institute of the Economic University under the Hanoi National University, believes that the best state of Vietnam ’s development is that the level between Taiwan and Malaysia is completely impossible to replace China. . (Finish)