(Fighting against New Crown Pneumonia) China's economic war "epidemic" record: traditional foreign trade hinders China to find a new way to break through

China News Agency, Beijing, April 8 (Reporter Li Xiaoyu) Under the epidemic situation, the traditional foreign trade door is getting narrower and narrower, and finding new development paths has become a matter of urgency. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang chaired an executive meeting of the State Council on the 7th, using the Internet to open a "window" for stabilizing foreign trade.

The meeting made it clear that the current traditional foreign trade has been greatly affected by the epidemic, and it is necessary to give greater play to the unique advantages of cross-border e-commerce and help the foreign trade to overcome difficulties with new formats. The meeting decided to establish 46 new cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test zones on the basis of the establishment of 46 new comprehensive test zones for the implementation of cross-border e-commerce retail export goods exempted from VAT and consumption tax, corporate income tax verification collection, etc. Support policy.

The meeting also proposed that the city where the qualified comprehensive pilot zone is located should be included in the cross-border e-commerce retail import pilot scope, and support companies to jointly build and share overseas warehouses.

In recent years, thanks to policy promotion, the scale of China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports has continued to grow at a high speed, and has become a noticeable new bright spot in the development of foreign trade. Taking imports as an example only, according to official data, China ’s cross-border e-commerce retail imports in 2019 reached 91.81 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), a year-on-year increase of 16.9%, which is more than 10 times the overall growth rate of China ’s imports over the same period.

Li Yi, an assistant researcher at the Institute of E-Commerce of the Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, said that China has gradually established a policy system that adapts to the development of cross-border e-commerce. Cross-border e-commerce is becoming a structural reform that helps China ’s foreign trade supply side New engine.

During the epidemic, the advantages of cross-border e-commerce have become more prominent, allowing enterprises to taste the sweetness.

According to statistics, since the launch of the "New Trade Festival in March" at the Alibaba International Station, as of March 15, the total number of visitors to the website has increased by 31% over the same period last year, the number of transaction buyers has increased by 46% year-on-year, and the scale of transaction performance has increased by 79% year-on-year .

In the Suzhou Industrial Park, since the resumption of production in mid-February, the customs has issued a total of 174,300 tickets for cross-border e-commerce online shopping bonded exports, an increase of more than 70% over the same period last year; the value of goods was 23.666 million yuan, an increase of more than 53%.

Analysts believe that under the circumstances that the global epidemic is still accelerating and China's foreign trade is seriously affected, accelerating the development of new formats and models such as cross-border e-commerce will not only help promote the steady growth of foreign trade imports and exports, but also increase consumption and employment. To promote the transformation and upgrading of China's foreign trade to better meet the needs of domestic consumers.

Before the executive meeting of the State Council, many places have intensively distributed policy "red envelopes" for cross-border e-commerce. For example, Hangzhou has introduced 8 measures including reducing logistics service fees, providing “zero rate” for cross-border collection, and increasing cross-border e-commerce export tax rebates; Suzhou attempts to export overseas warehouse parcel return business, so that e-commerce goods can be returned smoothly , Which reduces the costs of enterprises and eases the worries of enterprises.

Apart from e-commerce driving foreign trade, large-scale exhibitions have also been "moved" to the Internet. The meeting decided that the 127th Canton Fair will be held online in the middle and late of June. It will invite domestic and foreign merchants to display products online, use advanced information technology, provide all-weather online promotion, supply and purchase docking, online negotiation and other services to create online high-quality specialty products. Foreign trade platform.

Large-scale exhibitions have always been an important channel for foreign trade companies to obtain new orders. However, under the increasingly severe global epidemic situation, Chinese foreign trade companies are quite entangled with the mentality of this type of exhibition: they both hope to continue the exhibition, and worry that the buyers will not dare or cannot come as usual.

Online exhibitions are a good way to solve this "tangle": not only can minimize the intensive contact of personnel, to meet the needs of epidemic prevention and control, but also reduce the cost of exhibiting companies, help companies make new customers, win new orders, minimize The losses caused by the epidemic.

It is worth noting that "cloud investment", "cloud exhibition" and "cloud investment" have become popular in many places in China. For example, Keqiao District, Shaoxing City has the largest cloth distribution center in Asia. The local area is preparing to develop overseas exhibition halls to help companies solve the problem of being unable to participate in overseas exhibitions. At the same time, it has launched a "cloud exhibition" and other forms to strengthen promotion.

The epidemic has caused a big impact on traditional foreign trade, but it has also brought unprecedented development opportunities to new trade formats and models. There are reasons to believe that cross-border e-commerce, online exhibitions and other forms will help China's foreign trade stand out and ensure basic stability. (Finish)