(Economic Watch) Why are China's imports and exports "eye-catching" in April?
Beijing, 5 May (ZXS) -- After the performance in the first quarter exceeded expectations, China's foreign trade has once again attracted attention. The latest official data released on the 9th showed that China's total import and export value in April increased by 9.4% year-on-year, continuing to maintain rapid growth. Among them, exports increased by 8.9% year-on-year.
Data map: Trucks are busy shuttling in the Zhoushan Port area of Zhoushan Port in Ningbo, Zhejiang. Photo by China News Agency reporter Wang Gang
Gao Lingyun, a researcher at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with China News Agency that the year-on-year growth rate of foreign trade in April was relatively fast, which was not unrelated to the low base in the same period last year. In April 4, the total value of China's imports and exports increased by only 2022.4% year-on-year. In addition to the base effect, the exchange rate factors and policy adjustment effects have been released one after another, which are also beneficial to foreign trade.
In addition to continuing to maintain rapid growth, China's foreign trade has also seen two favorable changes: First, the proportion of imports and exports of private enterprises has exceeded 4%. In the first four months, the import and export of private enterprises increased by 15.8% year-on-year, accounting for 52.9% of China's total foreign trade value, an increase of 4.6 percentage points over the same period last year. Among them, the exports of private enterprises have accounted for 63.3% of China's total export value.
Private enterprises have always been known for their quick response and flexible action. The increase in the proportion of imports and exports of private enterprises means that the resilience and vitality of China's foreign trade have been further enhanced.
Second, the market is becoming increasingly diversified. In the first four months, China's imports and exports to countries along the "Belt and Road" totaled 4.4 trillion yuan, an increase of 61% year-on-year. ASEAN has increasingly become an important export market for China, with China's exports to ASEAN increasing by 16.4% year-on-year in the first four months. This helps diversify the risks associated with excessive market concentration.
However, some analysts remind that although China's foreign trade has grown more than expected recently, it is likely to be related to the digestion of the backlog of orders in the fourth quarter of last year, and it is expected to be difficult to become the norm during the year. Combined with the recent sluggish exports of neighboring countries such as South Korea and Vietnam, the overall global foreign demand situation is not optimistic, and the situation facing China's foreign trade is still grim.
At present, the official has introduced a series of measures to strengthen the stabilization of foreign trade, such as promoting the resumption of flights and flights of Chinese and foreign airlines, promoting the full recovery of domestic offline exhibitions, increasing the support of export credit insurance for new formats and models such as cross-border e-commerce, and further expanding the scale of RMB settlement of cross-border trade. These are aimed at the "pain points" of current foreign trade enterprises.
Zhang Xiaotao, dean of the School of International Economics and Trade of the Central University of Finance and Economics, said that historical experience shows that whenever it encounters external shocks and faces external pressures, the measures to stabilize foreign trade launched by the government to assess the situation and scientifically study and judge have good results.
Gao Lingyun suggested that in the future, the policy of stabilizing foreign trade should pay more attention to giving play to the leading role of major foreign trade provinces and large enterprises, and reasonably increase the policy intensity according to the situation. All factors considered, in dollar terms, China's foreign trade is expected to achieve 2% growth this year. This will be a good result at a time when global trade is generally sluggish. (End)