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China'S Trade With The "Belt And Road" Has Shown Strong Resilience

2023/4/24 13:21:00 0

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The data released by the General Administration of Customs recently shows that China's import and export to countries along the "Belt and Road" in the first quarter of this year amounted to 3.43 trillion yuan, accounting for 34.7% of China's overall foreign trade; The year-on-year growth rate was 16.8%, 12 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate. Among them, exports reached 2.04 trillion yuan, up 25.3%; Imports reached 1.39 trillion yuan, up 6.3%.

Experts interviewed said that in the context of the unfavorable global economic situation, China's trade with countries and regions along the "Belt and Road" continued to move forward steadily, showing strong resilience. This achievement is also the result of the concerted efforts of all parties to build the "Belt and Road" over the past decade.

Smooth trade is deepening

Qi Xin, director of the "Belt and Road" Economic and Trade Cooperation Research Institute of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said in an interview that since the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" 10 years ago, economic and trade cooperation has been deepening and taking shape, trade liberalization and facilitation have significantly improved, and new trade patterns and new business forms have emerged. The overall global economic situation in the first quarter of this year is not optimistic, but China has shown strong resilience to the goods trade of countries along the "Belt and Road". In RMB terms, China's total import and export value reached 9.89 trillion yuan, up 4.8% year on year. The volume of goods trade with countries along the "Belt and Road" is 12 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of China's foreign trade in the same period; The proportion in China's overall foreign trade reached a new high of 34.7%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than that when the "Belt and Road" initiative was proposed in 2013.

"This achievement is the result of the concerted efforts of all parties involved in the joint construction of the" Belt and Road "over the past ten years, and it is also inseparable from the dedication of China, the initiator of the joint construction of the" Belt and Road ", and from the strong support of China's super large market." Qi Xin said.

In Qi Xin's view, China's trade in goods with countries along the "Belt and Road" is more prominent. From a regional perspective, China's trade volume with ASEAN and Central Asian countries grew rapidly. In dollar terms, China's exports to Singapore and the Philippines grew 78.2% and 23.3% year on year respectively. From the perspective of categories, trade complementarity continues to increase, and the industrial chain supply chain is more unblocked. In the first quarter, China's exports of lithium batteries, auto parts and electrical control devices to countries and regions along the line grew by 50.3%, 40.5% and 23.9% respectively; The imports of energy products and agricultural products grew steadily, with import growth rates of 18.8% and 16.6% respectively. At the same time, over the past decade, China has continued to promote connectivity with countries and regions along the Belt and Road, and the development of China EU regular trains, new land and sea routes, etc. has advanced by leaps and bounds, injecting new impetus into China's economic and trade exchanges with countries and regions along the Belt and Road, and also driving the opening-up and development of the central and western regions. In the first quarter, the growth rate of import and export in the central and western regions was 7.8 percentage points higher than that of the whole country, accounting for 18.6% of the total, a record high in the same period of history.

Promote the healthy development of trade

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative. Over the past decade, the trade scale between China and the co construction countries has steadily expanded. From 2013 to 2022, the trade volume of goods between China and the countries and regions along the "Belt and Road" has expanded from US $1.04 trillion to US $2.07 trillion, with an average annual growth of 8%; The proportion of China's imports and exports to countries and regions along the line in China's overall foreign trade has increased significantly from 25% in 2013 to 32.9% in 2022.

On how to further promote the healthy development of trade between China and countries along the Belt and Road, Qi Xin suggested that, on the one hand, we should seize the development dividend of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP). The RCEP has been implemented for more than a year and will take effect for the Philippines at the beginning of June this year. This marks that RCEP will come into full force for 15 member countries, and the world's largest free trade zone has entered a new stage of full implementation. Enterprises should make full use of free trade agreement arrangements, including RCEP, to do a good job in industrial layout. On the other hand, we should strengthen efforts to promote the construction of new land sea channels, do a good job in hard connectivity, promote soft connectivity, and promote the construction of the China Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor relying on the China Laos Railway, the China Vietnam Railway, etc., to improve the ability to allocate global resources.

It is worth mentioning that since the opening and operation of the China Laos Railway in December 2021, it has been favored by customers with its advantages of safety and speed, and its freight volume has continued to rise. According to statistics, from January 1 to April 13, 2023, the Laos section of the China Laos Railway will run 1130 freight trains in total, an increase of 122% year on year, and the freight volume will exceed 1.18 million tons. At the same time, the categories of goods are also more abundant, expanding from more than 100 kinds at the initial stage of opening to more than 2000 kinds. At present, the China Laos Railway has been connected with the new land and sea channel in the west and the China Europe regular train. Goods are transported to more than 10 countries and regions along the "Belt and Road", including Laos, Thailand and Singapore.

In addition, Qi Xin also stressed that it is necessary to innovate new business forms and models of trade, expand cooperation in digital, health, green, innovation and other fields, promote "Silk Road e-commerce" cooperation, and close the industrial chain supply chain links.