Comprehensive land media reported on May 9 that nearly 130,000 overseas buyers participated in the Canton Fair offline, and more than 390,000 overseas buyers participated online. Xu Bing, spokesperson of the Canton Fair and deputy director of the Foreign Trade Center of the Communist Party of China, told the media: The export turnover of this year’s Canton Fair was better than expected. About 15%.
The Canton Fair is a comprehensive international trade event with the longest history, the largest scale and the largest number of buyers in China. It is regarded as a barometer for observing the situation of China’s import and export trade.
Last Thursday, the official data released by the CCP showed that the total value of China’s imports and exports of goods trade in the first quarter was 9.89 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.8%. Among them, exports increased by 8.4% year-on-year, and imports increased by 0.2% year-on-year. According to official analysis, China’s imports and exports got off to a stable start in the first quarter.
Radio Free Asia quoted a Reuters report as saying that China’s unexpected surge in exports in March reflected that manufacturers were rushing to work on orders that were delayed due to epidemic prevention and control last year, rather than new economic growth. In addition, sharp rises in borrowing costs in the U.S. and Europe have hit global demand for Chinese-made goods.
Xie Tian, a marketing professor at the Aiken School of Business at the University of South Carolina in the United States, told Radio Free Asia that if the above-mentioned situation continues, China will soon eat up the dividends from the surge in orders after the epidemic is unblocked.
The weakening of the global economy and the continued harsh business environment in China, especially the new version of the “Anti-espionage Law” and other actions to strengthen the security of the CCP regime, have prevented the entry of foreign capital, accelerated the withdrawal of foreign capital, and a sharp drop in overseas orders. Chinese manufacturers have to consider switching to conservative business strategies, such as reducing investment and reducing labor costs.
According to Sohu.com, according to McKinsey’s forecast, China will face the largest employment change, and it is estimated that 12 million to 102 million people will need to be reemployed.
However, China is still facing a serious problem of population aging.
In January of this year, the 2022 population data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that China experienced the first negative population growth after the Great Famine caused by the “Great Leap Forward” movement in the early 1960s.
Lu Jiehua, a professor at the Department of Sociology at Peking University, pointed out that a highly aging population structure will become the new normal in China’s labor market in the future.
An analysis report on the development trend of China’s aging population published by the State Information Center of the Communist Party of China in January pointed out that population aging will have an adverse impact on labor supply, capital accumulation and labor productivity, thereby hindering the improvement of economic growth potential. In terms of reducing labor supply, the increase in the proportion of the elderly population means that the proportion of the non-elderly population will decrease. If the labor force participation rate and birth rate are relatively stable, the result of population aging will inevitably lead to a decline in labor supply, and the potential economic growth rate will face downward pressure.
Last month, the Ministry of Finance of the Communist Party of China released the pension adjustment situation for 2023. There are 14 provinces with pension budget deficits, and the pension gap is as high as 244.044 billion yuan (the same below). Among them, Liaoning has a gap of 84.431 billion yuan, followed by Heilongjiang Province, which has a gap of 82.932 billion yuan, ranking second. The total pension gap of the three eastern provinces is as high as 189.2 billion yuan.
The depression of the economy and the continuous reduction of the population are the main reasons for the deficit of the pension fund. An economic and population crisis is coming.