China’s Foreign Trade Exceeds Expectations, Gains Momentum
By: Wang Wenbo
In a recent article published by the “Economic Information Daily,” China’s foreign trade for 2023 has exceeded expectations and gained momentum, marking a steady ending and a move towards “new” opportunities. The latest foreign trade report card reveals that China’s total import and export value in 2023 was 41.76 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.2%, signaling an achievement in promoting stability and improving quality.
Foreign trade serves as one of the key drivers of economic growth and as the first significant economic indicator of the year, it has garnered much attention from industry insiders. Despite the weak global economic recovery and relatively sluggish global trade, China’s import and export scale has steadily increased, enhancing overall confidence.
Deputy Director of the General Administration of Customs, Wang Lingjun, commented on the export growth, stating that while it may have slowed down compared to previous years, it achieved reasonable growth in volume and maintained overall stability in share. The World Trade Organization (WTO) reported that China’s export market share in the international market is expected to remain at a high level of around 14% in 2023.
Zhuang Rui, executive director of the Institute of International Economics at the University of International Business and Economics, summarized the performance of China’s foreign trade as “forging ahead.” She noted that China’s foreign trade has overcome numerous impacts and achieved positive growth.
Looking at the 2023 foreign trade report card, several highlights underscore the positive development trend of China’s foreign trade. For example, the exports of “three new” products exceeded 1.06 trillion yuan, breaking through the trillion-yuan mark for the first time. Additionally, cross-border e-commerce imports and exports in 2023 reached 2.38 trillion yuan, an increase of 15.6%.
Policies are being strengthened to support foreign trade companies and cultivate new momentum, with the Central Economic Work Conference proposing the acceleration of new foreign trade momentum and the expansion of intermediate goods trade, service trade, digital trade, and cross-border e-commerce exports.
The Ministry of Commerce is working with local departments to implement various policies to stabilize foreign trade, and the customs survey results of key import and export companies show that more than three-quarters of the companies expect import and export to remain flat or grow in 2024.
With multi-pronged policies to support foreign trade and cultivate new momentum, China’s foreign trade is expected to achieve higher quality development in 2024 and beyond. As high-level opening up continues to advance, multilateral and bilateral economic and trade cooperation will also usher in broader development space, serving as a strong support for China’s foreign trade.