(Economic Observation) Can China's foreign trade continue to be "bullish" in the Year of the Ox?

　　China News Service, Beijing, February 15 (Reporter Li Xiaoyu) Under the epidemic, China's foreign trade has handed over a "unexpected" report card in 2020: the scale has increased by 1.9% against the trend, becoming the only cargo in the world The major economies whose trade is growing have also reached the highest level in the international market, and their status as the largest country in trade in goods has become more stable.

　　In the new year, can China's foreign trade continue to be "bullish"?

　　At present, there is great hope for stable growth.

　　Whether the trade is good or not depends largely on the "face" of the overseas market.

With the acceleration of vaccine development and inoculation process, after experiencing the most severe recession after World War II, the world economy and trade may come out of the trough in 2021, which has laid the foundation for China's foreign trade to maintain a positive trend.

　　Many international organizations have recently made optimistic expectations about the global economic outlook.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes that taking into account the overall better-than-expected performance of the world economy in the second half of 2020, the global economic growth rate this year is expected to reach 5.5%, which is 0.3 percentage points higher than the forecast in October last year.

The World Bank stated that if the epidemic is effectively controlled and vaccines are rapidly spread, the global economic growth rate is expected to reach 5% in 2021.

　　Wang Tao, head of economic research at UBS Asia, believes that with the successive launch of multiple vaccines and large-scale vaccination, the number of confirmed cases of new coronary pneumonia in the world may decrease significantly starting in the second quarter of 2021, and the global economy is expected to rebound significantly.

The rebound in overall economic activity will help stimulate external demand and thus support China's exports.

　　The accelerated recovery of the Chinese economy will also help expand the domestic market and promote a rebound in imports.

　　Last year, China became the only major economy in the world that achieved positive growth.

Many analysts believe that China's economy may continue to outperform other countries this year, and the growth rate is expected to exceed 8%.

As the domestic economy continues to improve, the consumption that was once deeply affected by the epidemic will gradually come out of the trough, achieve recovery growth, and drive the steady expansion of imports.

　　In addition, a series of policy measures will also help China stabilize its foreign trade.

　　The policy effect was indispensable for the reason that China's foreign trade was able to maintain growth under the epidemic last year.

From supporting enterprises to resume work and production, to actively holding various online large-scale exhibitions such as the Canton Fair, helping enterprises to open up new orders, the official foreign trade stabilization policy has been promulgated at an unprecedented speed and intensity.

　　This year's foreign trade policy has more highlights.

Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao recently revealed that the next step will be to build a national import trade promotion innovation demonstration zone, and to establish a trade unblocked working group with countries related to the “Belt and Road” to expand the scale of overseas warehouses and strengthen the construction of an international marketing system.

Based on many favorable policies, this year's foreign trade is expected to increase in scale while further improving quality and efficiency.

　　However, the relative advantage of China's foreign trade growth may be weakened this year.

　　Lian Ping, chairman of the China Chief Economist Forum, believes that in the first half of this year, strong overseas demand for epidemic prevention materials and "home economy" products, as well as their own shortage of supply, will continue for some time, which will benefit China's exports.

However, in the second half of the year, the epidemic situation in various countries may be significantly alleviated due to the promotion of vaccines, and the demand for epidemic prevention products will gradually decrease; the production capacity of emerging economies will also gradually recover, and the impact of the appreciation of the renminbi on exports will gradually appear, and China's export growth rate may be somewhat Slow down.

　　In addition, after the recovery of the world economy, consumers, especially those in developed economies, may pay more attention to services rather than commodities.

This change in consumption patterns may lead to lower-than-expected import demand intensity, resulting in lower-than-expected demand for Chinese products.

This is also one of the variables that China's foreign trade may face in the future.

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