Despite the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak and other adverse factors, China's foreign trade performance in August still exceeded market expectations, and import and export achieved a positive growth for the 15 consecutive month.
According to the data released by the General Administration of Customs on September 7, in August, the total value of China's foreign trade import and export was 3.43 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.9% and a month on month increase of 5%. Among them, the export was 1.9 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.7%; Imports reached 1.53 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.1%.
Li Kuiwen, spokesman of the General Administration of customs and director of the Department of statistics and analysis, said that the success of foreign trade was mainly due to China's effective prevention and control of the epidemic, which made the economy recover steadily and improve steadily, and provided strong support for the steady growth of foreign trade import and export.
Yang Changyong, a researcher at the Institute of foreign economics of the Chinese Academy of macroeconomic research, said that the overseas real economy continued to recover in August, and the epidemic situation in Southeast Asia, one of the global processing and manufacturing centers, was more severe, which continued China's export substitution effect to a certain extent.
From the perspective of trade structure, the growth and proportion of China's general trade import and export show that the foreign trade structure is continuously optimized. In the first eight months, the import and export of general trade was 15.36 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.9%, accounting for 62% of China's total foreign trade, a year-on-year increase of 1.6 percentage points. From the perspective of trading partners, China's imports and exports to major trading partners such as ASEAN, the European Union and the United States increased. In the first eight months, ASEAN was China's largest trading partner. The total value of trade between China and ASEAN was 3.59 trillion yuan, an increase of 22.8%, accounting for 14.5% of China's total foreign trade. The United States is the third largest trading partner, with a year-on-year increase of 25.8%.
It is noteworthy that the import and export growth of private enterprises is the fastest and the proportion has increased, which has become a highlight of China's foreign trade development since this year. Data show that in the first eight months, the import and export of private enterprises reached 11.92 trillion yuan, an increase of 29.9%, accounting for 48.1% of China's total foreign trade, an increase of 2.3 percentage points over the same period last year.
"In the first eight months, there were 427000 private enterprises with import and export performance in China, an increase of 9% over the same period last year." Li Kuiwen said that these private enterprises, especially a group of "specialized and new" small and medium-sized enterprises, have high foreign trade participation and strong flexibility, and have become an important source for the steady improvement of the vitality of China's foreign trade development.
In terms of imports, commodity imports showed mixed gains and losses. Among them, the import volume of iron ore, crude oil, coal and other commodities decreased, and the import volume and price of soybeans increased. It is noteworthy that among the imported mechanical and electrical products, the total import of integrated circuits reached 424.05 billion, an increase of 27.2%.
"At present, the global epidemic is still evolving, and the external environment is becoming more complex and severe. It is expected that the growth rate of foreign trade may fall in the fourth quarter." Li Kuiwen said that the recurrence of the global epidemic has increased the uncertainty and instability of the world economic recovery. Yang Changyong believes that with the acceleration of supply repair in relevant countries and regions and the fall in external demand of developed economies, it may lead to increased pressure on China's foreign trade.
