On April 13th, the State Council Press Office held a press conference to introduce the foreign trade import and export in the first quarter. According to customs statistics, the total import and export value of China’s goods trade in the first quarter was 9.89 trillion yuan, up 4.8% year-on-year. Among them, exports were 5.65 trillion yuan, up 8.4% year-on-year; Imports were 4.24 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.2%. "In the first quarter, China’s foreign trade import and export showed strong resilience, and the start was stable and good, laying the foundation for achieving stable and improved foreign trade throughout the year." Lu Daliang, spokesman of the General Administration of Customs and director of the Statistical Analysis Department, said at the press conference.
The number of foreign trade business entities has increased steadily.
Since the beginning of this year, the domestic epidemic situation has turned steadily, and the resumption of work and production has been accelerated. China’s economic operation has stabilized and rebounded, and production and demand have gradually improved, which has promoted the obvious stabilization of foreign trade import and export.
The growth rate of foreign trade import and export has increased month by month. In January this year, affected by the Spring Festival holiday, imports and exports fell by 7%; "From negative to positive" in February, with an increase of 8% in that month; In March, the year-on-year growth rate increased to 15.5%, showing a good trend month by month. In the first quarter, the overall import and export increased by 4.8%, 2.6 percentage points higher than that in the fourth quarter of last year. "The import and export of foreign trade is improving month by month, which is the embodiment of the majority of foreign trade enterprises giving full play to their vitality, taking the initiative and actively grasping orders and expanding the market." Lu Daliang said.
The number of foreign trade business entities has increased steadily. In the first quarter, there were 457,000 foreign trade enterprises with import and export performance, up 5.9% year-on-year. Among them, a large number of flexible private enterprises have played an active role in stabilizing the scale and optimizing the structure of foreign trade. In the first quarter, there were 384,000 private enterprises, up by 7.5%, and the import and export was 5.18 trillion yuan, up by 14.4%, accounting for 52.4% of the total import and export value. In the same period, the import and export of foreign-invested enterprises was 3.04 trillion yuan, and the import and export of state-owned enterprises was 1.65 trillion yuan, accounting for 30.7% and 16.7% of the total import and export value respectively.
The proportion of import and export of general trade increased. In the first quarter, the import and export of general trade was 6.46 trillion yuan, up 7.9% year-on-year, accounting for 65.3% of the total import and export value, up 1.9 percentage points over the same period last year. Among them, exports were 3.68 trillion yuan, an increase of 12.7%; Imports reached 2.78 trillion yuan, up 2.2%.
The "new three" performance is eye-catching
Faced with the challenge of weakening external demand, China’s foreign trade is facing difficulties, and its new competitive advantages and new growth momentum are constantly cultivated and strengthened, which has played a more positive role in the overall stability of foreign trade. In the first quarter, China’s electric manned vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells were the "new three kinds", with a total export of 264.69 billion yuan, up 66.9% year-on-year, accounting for 1.7 percentage points higher than the national export, reaching 4.7%.
The driving force for overall export growth continued to increase. Last year, the "new three samples" boosted the overall export growth of China by 1.7 percentage points, and in the first quarter of this year, it boosted the overall export growth by 2 percentage points, further increasing the pulling effect.
Exports to major trading partners grew rapidly. In the first quarter of this year, China’s exports to the five major markets of the European Union, the United States, ASEAN, South Korea and the United Kingdom increased by 88.7%, 88.1%, 103.5%, 121.7% and 118.2%, respectively, accounting for 71.6% of the total export value of the new three products.
All kinds of foreign trade main body exports compete to exert strength. In the first quarter, private enterprises, foreign-invested enterprises, state-owned enterprises and other business entities all achieved rapid growth in their exports, with the growth rates reaching 79.3%, 40.9% and 121.9% respectively. Among them, private enterprises accounted for 65.4% of the total export value of the "new three samples", the proportion increased by 4.5 percentage points compared with the same period of last year, and the proportion of private enterprises in the total export was higher than that of private enterprises.
Electric manned vehicles lead the "new three". In the first quarter, the export of electric manned vehicles was 64.75 billion yuan, an increase of 122.3%, and the growth rate was the fastest among the "new three"; The proportion of China’s automobile exports increased by 5.1 percentage points to 43.9%.
The RCEP policy dividend continues to be released.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative and the 10th anniversary of the major initiative to build a closer China-ASEAN community of destiny. In the past 10 years, the proportion of China’s imports and exports to countries along the Belt and Road has increased from 25% in 2013 to 32.9% in 2022; China’s trade with ASEAN grew at an average annual rate of 9.9%, which was 4.3 percentage points faster than that of China’s foreign trade as a whole, and ASEAN jumped from the third largest trading partner of China to the largest trading partner.
From the first quarter of this year, China’s import and export to ASEAN was 1.56 trillion yuan, up 16.1% year-on-year, 11.3 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate, accounting for 15.8% of the total import and export value. In the same period, China’s import and export to countries along the Belt and Road increased by 16.8%, accounting for 34.6% of the total import and export value, an increase of 3.5 percentage points; Imports and exports to other member countries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) increased by 7.3%.
"Benefiting from the policy dividend brought about by the implementation of RCEP, the trade between China and ASEAN continues to heat up. In the first quarter, the import and export scale between China and ASEAN accounted for 50.8% of the foreign trade scale with RCEP trading partners, accounting for more than half. " Lv Daliang introduced that in the first quarter, China enterprises benefited from the import value of 18.25 billion yuan under RCEP, and the tax concession was 480 million yuan. The main goods that benefited from the import were plastics and their products, machinery and appliances and their parts, inorganic chemicals, etc. The export amount is 62.29 billion yuan, and the tariff reduction of member countries is 930 million yuan. The main export commodities are clothing and clothing accessories, inorganic chemicals, plastics and their products. There are 578 approved exporters in China who independently issued 2181 RCEP declaration of origin, with a value of 2.05 billion yuan.
Lv Daliang said that China and ASEAN are important trading partners of each other. With the continuous release of dividends after the entry into force of RCEP and the acceleration of the negotiation process of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area Version 3.0, the economic and trade cooperation between the two sides is expected to continue to maintain a good momentum. (Reporter Xu Peiyu)