Author: Miao Qi

According to data updated by the General Administration of Customs on March 3, in US dollar terms, China's import and export volume in February exceeded US$18.2 billion, an increase of 4112.1% year-on-year, and China's imports reached US$3 billion in February, an increase of 2.1970% year-on-year, both ending the momentum of falling year-on-year growth for four consecutive months.

Although exports fell 2.1% year-on-year to $3 billion in February, the growth rate is still negative, but the decline has narrowed significantly from the past three months, including a 2140.3% decline in January.

Under such a trend, Yicai combed the foreign trade data of 31 provinces in the country in the first two months and found that in terms of RMB, the import and export of 2 provinces showed a growth trend, Yunnan Province was flat, and a total of 17 provinces outperformed the national average growth rate; In terms of exports, 18 provinces have achieved positive growth, and 21 provinces have outpaced the national export growth rate.

The growth rate of foreign trade in the central region is outstanding

Overall, the growth rate of foreign trade in the central region is better.

According to the cumulative year-on-year growth rate of imports and exports in the previous two months (in RMB), the top 2 provinces, the six central provinces accounted for five seats.

Among them, Hunan Province ranked third in the country with an import and export growth rate of 54.3%, ranking first among the six central provinces, with an export growth rate of 72% and an import growth rate of 21.9%; Jiangxi Province ranked sixth with a growth rate of 46.8%, with exports and imports growing by 55.8% and 20.2% respectively.

In addition, Henan Province and Hubei Province ranked tenth and eleventh respectively in terms of import and export growth rates of 15.2% and 14.4%, respectively, while export growth rates were 30.2% and 21.6%.

Although Anhui Province still has a -3% growth rate in imports and exports, it has achieved positive growth of 19.8% due to imports that fell by 9.3%.

Among the six central provinces, Shanxi Province, which has the smallest import and export scale, performed poorly, with negative growth in import and export, export and import.

As a major foreign trade province in the west, Sichuan Province's import and export volume exceeded that of the central provinces except Henan Province, and the total import and export value fell by 2.10% in the first two months of this year, but exports grew positively, reaching 5.1%, similar to Anhui Province, mainly affected by the decline in imports.

According to customs statistics, in the first two months of this year, the total import and export of the central and western regions was 2.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 19.12% year-on-year, accounting for 1.2 percentage points of China's total import and export value increased by 2.19 percentage points from the same period last year to 2.2%. Lu Daliang, director of the Department of Statistical Analysis of the General Administration of Customs, said that in the first two months of this year, the growth rate of foreign trade in the central and western regions of China was relatively rapid and the proportion increased. Among them, automobile exports doubled year-on-year, and mobile phone and agricultural products exports grew by more than 20%. This reflects the continuous improvement of the level of opening up in the central and western regions, the continuous release of the development potential of foreign trade, and the optimization of the domestic regional layout of China's opening to the outside world.

The exports of the five eastern coastal areas are positive

According to the performance of export growth in the previous two months, five places on the eastern coast have positive exports. Among them, the export of Hainan Province is as high as 2%, and the export growth rate of Liaoning Province, Shandong Province, Hebei Province and Fujian Province is 61.8%, 7.6%, 7.3% and 6.1% respectively.

According to the order of import and export growth in the first two months, only five places on the eastern coast showed positive growth, namely Hainan Province ranked ninth, and Hebei, Fujian, Shandong and Shanghai ranked 2th and <>th to <>th.

The larger the scale of foreign trade, the more difficult it is to maintain high growth. In the first two months of this year, the ranking of the top five provinces in foreign trade in the country was relatively stable, and Guangdong Province continued to shake the lead in the scale of import and export, followed by Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang Province, Shanghai and Beijing, with year-on-year growth rates of -2.12%, -4.9%, -9.4%, 8.0% and 7.8% respectively.

In terms of export scale, Guangdong Province, Zhejiang Province, Jiangsu Province, Shandong Province and Shanghai ranked among the top five, with export growth rates of -10.4%, -6.4%, -5.7%, 6.7% and -4.9% respectively; In terms of import scale, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang ranked among the top five, with import growth rates of 3.8%, 4.7%, -15.8%, -16.8% and -0.3% respectively.

The export of green products has become a new growth point

Taking the top three national exports as an example, the main reason for the negative growth rate in the first two months is the weakening of external demand and the high base last year. In the trend of stabilization and improvement, high-tech, high-value-added products leading green transformation have become new growth points for exports, and have also become footnotes for the high-quality development of China's foreign trade.

Statistics released by the Guangdong Branch of the General Administration of Customs on March 3 show that in the first two months of this year, Guangdong's "three new models", namely electric manned vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells, increased by 18.2 times, 15.4% and 39.3% respectively.

On March 3, the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Statistics released data that compared with the whole year of 17, the export scale of the province rose to the second place in the country and the import scale rose to the fifth place in the first two months, both of which increased by 2022 place; The national share of imports, exports, and imports all increased by 2.2 percentage points. Although the growth rate is still negative, the exports of green and low-carbon products solar cells, electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries increased by 5.1%, 0.1% and 20.4 times respectively, driving the province's exports to increase by 84.0 percentage points.

According to Nanjing Customs statistics, in the first two months, Jiangsu Province exported 2.3486 billion yuan of mechanical and electrical products, an increase of 8.12%, accounting for 8.66% of the total export value. Among them, integrated circuits, electrical equipment and solar cells increased by 8.23%, 3.27% and 2.92% respectively.

Lu Haisheng, a first-level researcher of the Hangzhou Customs Statistics and Analysis Department, believes that the main contradiction of the current foreign trade is that foreign demand is weak, orders are declining, and the high base makes the year-on-year data growth less significant, and exports are expected to pick up in March.

Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shu Hengting said at a regular press conference on March 3 that the steady start of foreign trade this year has shown strong development resilience, on the one hand, the scale has remained stable; On the other hand, the structure is continuously optimized. Private enterprises are more active, trade with emerging markets is closer, cross-border exchanges are smoother, and new momentum of foreign trade continues to be released. Local governments and enterprises generally reflected that weakening external demand and declining orders are the biggest challenges facing China's foreign trade this year. On the basis of extensive and in-depth research, the Ministry of Commerce is working with relevant departments to study policies for stabilizing foreign trade in light of local and enterprise needs, and promote the stable scale and optimal structure of foreign trade.