Foreign Trade Entering The "New Normal" Needs To Take A Good Balance Beam.

"The development of China's foreign trade has entered a new normal."

Zheng Yuesheng, spokesman of the General Administration of customs, recently explained to China News Agency reporters about the relationship between the growth rate of foreign trade and the annual target in the first three quarters.

Zheng Yuesheng stressed that 7.5% of the year's foreign trade development goal is only "an expected target". Although this goal is "very important", it should not be overlooked that China's foreign trade entering the new normal is in the "shifting period of growth and structural pformation", and has entered the stage of rapid growth from the "high-speed growth stage".

Experts pointed out that under the "new normal", China's foreign trade is facing a good balance beam.

Balanced trade growth and pformation and upgrading

China, which is already the largest country in World Trade in goods, first needs to solve the problem of how to upgrade its foreign trade from "annual volume" to "heavy quality".

"The share of China's labor-intensive products in major markets such as Europe, America and Japan continues to decline."

Turning to the negative factors that affect the development of China's foreign trade, Zheng Yuesheng first stressed that in recent years, with the continuous rise of minimum wage standards in various parts of China, the comprehensive operating costs of labor, financing, land and other enterprises continue to rise, and the constraints of resources and environment are constantly increasing, leading to the weakening of traditional industrial export competitive advantage.

According to the monthly survey of 3000 enterprises by the customs, about 65% of the enterprises every month reflect the continuous increase in the total cost of production.

"From a long-term and macro perspective, China's trade structure is bound to change."

Liu Xuezhi, a researcher at Bank of communications Financial Research Center, analyzed the proportion of China's traditional labor and resource intensive industries on the one hand, and on the other hand, the government has been promoting this pformation from the policy level in recent years.

Liu Xuezhi stressed that China is already the world's largest trading nation. "The growth of foreign trade in the past two digits is certainly not sustainable. After all, there is not such a large market space for the world to absorb so many exports. Besides, China is also faced with multiple pressures of industrial restructuring, de production and resources."

Expanding imports and improving revenue and expenditure structure

In July and August, China's trade surplus continued to hit a record high.

Zheng Yuesheng said that China's trade surplus has indeed expanded this year, mainly due to the rapid recovery of exports and relatively low imports: on the one hand, the international market, especially the developed economies, has improved to China.

On the other hand, the decline in commodity prices has affected the value of imports and expanded exports.

The trade surplus was widened by the low contrast.

To this end, the executive meeting of the State Council in September 29th pointed out that the strategy of import promotion should be implemented to promote balance of payments and enhance the level of opening up cooperation.

"We do not pursue trade surplus. We look forward to a more balanced, coordinated and sustainable development of trade."

Zheng Yuesheng said that with the arrival of the State Council executive meeting on strengthening the import and opening up policy and other policy measures, we believe that the phenomenon of China's sluggish imports will be further improved and the surplus will be further balanced.

"These measures will help to improve the balanced development of trade in goods."

Liu Xuezhi reminded us that although the trade surplus of goods is relatively fast, the service trade still maintains a relatively high deficit. This year, it is estimated that the deficit will reach US $130 billion and will not be reversed in the next few years.

However, taking into account the effect of official policy landing, he predicts that the current year's current account surplus will not grow as fast as in previous years.

In the first three quarters, the growth rate of China's imports and exports is only 3.3%, and Bai Ming, a researcher at the Ministry of Commerce and international trade and Economic Cooperation Research Institute, pointed out that this means that the growth of foreign trade and the national economy is generally not synchronized.

From a global perspective, the growth rate of international trade has also slowed down.

Zheng Yuesheng cited the World Trade Organization (WTO) data, pointing out that this year's Global trade growth forecast this year dropped by 1.6 percentage points from 4.7% in April at the end of September.

In this regard, the chief economic officer of the National Information Center, Jian Ping, pointed out that "the world's first trading power can grow by an average of 4% in the next 10 years, and it will not be easy to synchronize with the world economy".

Liu Xuezhi also pointed out that in fact, considering the relatively low export growth rate in the first half of this year, it is not realistic to request that the annual growth rate of foreign trade and GDP growth remain flat.

"In the past, foreign trade could pull up to two percentage points for the whole economic growth. Now I am afraid it does not need such a high growth rate, and it can also maintain GDP growth."

Liu Xuezhi said.