Foreign Trade 7.5% Growth Target Is Difficult To Achieve Free Trade Zone Expansion Emergency Rush To Help

The Central Committee is obviously concerned about this.

The just concluded central economic work conference stressed the need to expand exports and increase import policies, improve trade facilitation and consolidate export market share.

In December 12th, Li Keqiang presided over the executive meeting of the State Council. He said that relying on the existing new districts and parks, there are three free trade zones in the specific areas of Guangdong, Tianjin and Fujian. This is obviously another major positive for foreign trade.

7.5% hard to achieve

Looking back at the whole year of 2014, China's foreign trade can be described in four words: ups and downs.

In the first half of the year, the import and export data showed a grim trend of negative growth, but in the second half of the year, it was "frequent reports" in the first few months, and exports even once hit nearly two digit growth, but the data in November declined again.

Customs data show that in November, China's total import and export value was 2 trillion and 270 billion yuan, down 0.3% compared to the same period last year.

Among them, exports of 1 trillion and 300 billion yuan, an increase of 4.9%; imports of 970 billion yuan, down 6.5%.

Wang Jianhui, deputy general manager of the securities research and development department, said that the target of foreign trade growth set at the beginning of this year is basically hopeless, but in foreign trade

Next, we should treat the data of foreign trade more dialectically, especially the quantity and quality of foreign trade growth.

"It is suggested that the target of foreign trade growth in 2015 will be set at around 5%."

He said.

"Under the new normal foreign trade, the target of foreign trade should be a soft target."

Bai Ming, deputy director of the International Market Research Institute of the international trade and Economic Cooperation Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, told reporters that foreign trade should focus on the long term, take advantage of China's foreign trade in the global scale, expand its opening up, and speed up the pace of guiding the formulation of trade rules.

Bai Ming believes that in the context of the current international market instability, the pressure of RMB appreciation and the pressure of external competition, China's foreign trade growth will be difficult to reappear in the past, but the situation of foreign trade downturn has been reversed some time ago.

At present, foreign trade is difficult to play the main force of "steady growth" this year, but it will not play a role of "drag the legs".

Wang Jun, Vice Minister of the China International Economic Exchange Center, said that the growth of foreign trade this year will reach 6% after being affected by the domestic economic downturn and foreign economic recovery. This is already a very ideal figure. Next year, the growth rate of import and export is likely to be further lowered.

Li Huiyong, chief macroeconomic analyst at Shenyang Wanguo [micro-blog], pointed out that imports and exports were lower than expected, indicating that it is not only bad at the end of 2014, but also likely to continue to bear pressure in 2015. This year it seems difficult for exports to achieve target growth, and the nominal growth of exports is expected to increase by about 8% next year.

What is more worrying than the failure of foreign trade to achieve the established goals is the trade imbalance, while the trade surplus will increase international trade friction while raising foreign exchange reserves.

In recent years, China has been in the trade surplus for a long time, and this situation is even more serious this year.

As of November, China's trade surplus reached US $332 billion 500 million in 2014, which has far exceeded the highest value in the past few years.

The trade surplus is rising, which is known as the "declining trade surplus" by the industry.

The declining trade surplus refers to the atypical trade surplus caused by the deterioration of external demand, the double contraction of imports and exports, and the decline in imports as a result of the global economic recession.

With the slowdown in export growth, the growth rate of imports has declined this year, leading to a larger trade surplus.

The trade surplus in November has hit three new highs this year. In the month of November, the trade surplus hit a record of 54 billion 500 million US dollars. This is the trade surplus this year, which has hit a new high in the single month.

The trade surplus hit a record high of $47 billion 300 million in July, while the August record was revised to $48 billion 900 million again.

As early as 2011, the government set the target of trade surplus at US $100 billion. At the end of the year, the target was adjusted to US $150 billion.

In 2012, the target was directly targeted at $150 billion, and by the end of the year, the trade surplus was again defeated by 231 billion 100 million dollars.

At that time, the industry referred to the $231 billion 100 million of the year as a "huge surplus".

Back in 2014, the departments concerned no longer formulated this "illusory" surplus target, but in the past two years, the surplus figures were rising rapidly as if they were sitting on the rocket: in 2013, the trade surplus was sitting on the throne of history for the first time in 257 billion 900 million dollars, while the figures in the first 11 months of 2014 were much higher than that in 2013.

Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, told our reporter that "China does not seek a favorable balance. We hope that trade will achieve a balance, while we must attach importance to supporting the expansion of exports, we must also strive to expand imports."

"The current account surplus is too large, which not only brings pressure to the market, but also increases the expectation of appreciation.

The rise of the real effective exchange rate will weaken the competitiveness of China's foreign trade sector and pose a downside risk to China's exports. "

Lian Ping said in an interview with reporters.

Whether the import and export data of the whole year is going down or the trade surplus is increasing significantly, it can be said that it is imported.

This year, the state has also taken some measures to promote trade balance.

Following the executive meeting of the Executive Council of the State Council in September, which put forward the implementation of the positive import promotion strategy, the promotion of balance of payments and the improvement of the level of open cooperation, the general office of the State Council promulgated the "opinions on strengthening imports" in November, and put forward eight measures to further strengthen the import of technology, products and services.

The December 4th meeting of the Central Political Bureau also stressed the need to "optimize the structure of foreign trade, improve the stable export policy, and actively increase imports".

But these measures failed to save bad import data.

In November, China imported 970 billion yuan, a decrease of 6.5%. In November, it imported 10 trillion and 950 billion yuan, a decrease of 0.4%.

Whether in the single month of November or the total amount of the first 11 months, imports are in negative growth.

"Import growth is still somewhat surprising, compared with exports, or very bad.

Mainly because of weak domestic demand, especially the demand for commodities.

Moreover, commodity prices have fallen sharply in the past period, which will drive down the growth of imports.

Zhou Hao, an economist with ANZ bank in China, said.

Li Jian, director of the Institute of Foreign Trade Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said that China's foreign trade fundamentals, especially imports, have not completely improved, and the growth of import and export will remain relatively low in the recent period.

"Although the foreign trade situation of next year is not optimistic, we should not lose confidence and see all kinds of positive factors," he said. For example, the promotion and replication of Shanghai free trade area, the importance of the integration of the Yangtze River economic belt and Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, the continuous progress of the RMB internationalization process, the vigorous development of cross-border e-commerce, the acceleration of the "one belt along the way" construction, and the enhancement of the implementation of the strategy in the free trade area will bring positive effects.