East And West Foreign Trade

At the beginning of the new year, the local two sessions have revealed the possible economic trend of China in 2014. It is understood that the target of foreign trade growth and the external development strategy of the provinces in the new year have been basically finalized. China's opening to the outside world has begun to change along with the opening of a new round of business opportunities.

Midwest: "two digit growth should not be a problem."

On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2014, the Yao Yao border in Pingxiang, Guangxi Trade market There are no cold streets and long streets lined with thousands of shops facing border trade. This is one of the main distribution centers for Chinese goods exported to Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

A shopkeepers pointed to the electric cookers, hair driers and electric irons on the shelves and told reporters that these small appliances were cheap, and they were very popular in Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea and other countries. Pingxiang is very close to Vietnam, which products are good to sell and which products are not good to sell. Most of the goods in the store come from several coastal provinces in Guangdong and Fujian. They usually sell and replenish goods at the same time, avoiding the backlog of inventory. The annual flow of small shops can reach millions of yuan, and it is expected to increase in 2014.

Customs statistics show that from 1 to September 2013, Pingxiang The total import and export volume was 4 billion 470 million US dollars, an increase of 70.4% over the same period last year. According to an immigration officer who understands the local situation, Pingxiang is closer to the market than the direct shipment from the coastal areas. In recent years, border trade has developed rapidly. Although the market is gradually saturated, the export growth in 2014 may not be as fast as it used to be, but "two digit growth should not be a problem."

"Two digit growth" in today's less prosperous foreign trade environment is enough for many places to envy, but in Guangxi, Pingxiang's story is not isolated. Not far from Pingxiang, while Fangchenggang is developing border trade, it is considering attracting the processing industry of foreign trade products.

Fangchenggang's deputy mayor, Xi Yang, said that, at present, border trade has only led to trade and logistics related industries. Although trade growth is very high, the support for economic growth is very limited. In order to solve this problem, Fangchenggang is planning 7 supporting industrial parks, of which 3 are industrial parks. On the one hand, the production and processing industry of clothing, household appliances, toys and other products exported from China will be transferred from coastal areas to the cities along the border to sell locally. On the other hand, products imported from abroad, such as fruits and minerals, can also be processed directly in the border cities, and become products with high added value and then sold to the whole country.

Using geopolitical advantages to develop export processing industry, Xi Yang described this idea as "changing the channel economy into an industrial economy". Today, Fangchenggang has built 100 million tonnes of ports and approved the construction of the "Dongxing key national development and opening up pilot area" to support the development of the processing industry. "In 2013, a large number of projects began to fall. Now our power plants use coal imported from Indonesia, and a considerable proportion of non-ferrous metal manufacturing enterprises import from Philippines and Indonesia. These processing industries not only promote economic development, but also expand import demand." Xi Yang said that in 2013, Fangchenggang's import and export volume was about 2 billion 200 million US dollars, and it is estimated that foreign trade growth will reach 20% in 2014.

In January 16th, at the three session of the twelve National People's Congress of Guangxi in January 16th, Guangxi's foreign trade growth target was set to 12% in 2014. Following the convening of the local two conferences, Guizhou 20%, Gansu 10% and Hubei 10%, most foreign trade growth targets in the central and western provinces exceeded the coastal traditional foreign trade provinces such as Guangdong and Fujian. "The coastal areas are the main force of our foreign trade development, but now the central and western regions are catching up vigorously. Their advantages are also playing a positive role. How to cultivate their regional competitiveness is the focus of our future work." Yao Jianru, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, said. {page_break}

Eastern provinces have lowered growth targets

Compared with the bustling scene of Pingxiang, the vast majority of shops in Yiwu International Trade City have received notice of the Spring Festival holiday in January 17th. From January 26th to February 11th, the 1 to 5 districts of Yiwu national trade city will be closed for the rest of the day. The notice said, "we hope that the owners will take away all the goods in their stores, and the market will conduct fire water sprinkler and water curtain system comprehensive discharge test."

As a matter of fact, in the twelfth lunar month, the number of passengers in the international trade city has been significantly reduced. Many businessmen have been waiting for the new year. On the other hand, the more than 50 thousand online merchants gathered around the Yiwu small commodity market have processed orders continuously, and a number of goods have been sent to all parts of the country and the international market.

In recent years, the Yiwu small commodity market operation mode gradually lost its advantage by the low manufacturing cost and the wholesale market price reduction of the small commodity market. On the contrary, online small foreign trade has become a hot topic of development. A large number of small and micro enterprises in Yiwu are exposed to the terminal consumers of the international trade through the network platform, private customization, rapid response, skip intermediaries to reduce costs, and bid farewell to the dilemma of low price competition.

In fact, the story of Yiwu is a common experience in the coastal provinces of foreign trade. With the rapid increase of labor costs, the traditional mode of trade is unsustainable. More and more foreign multinationals are beginning to transfer their processing to countries such as Vietnam and Laos, and a large number of Chinese private small and micro enterprises do not have the capital to run away, so they must be reformed and innovating.

However, reform is not an easy task. Huo Jianguo, President of the international trade and Economic Cooperation Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said to China Economic Weekly that taking cross-border e-commerce as an example, if we can not solve the many problems existing in cross-border payment, it will be difficult to expand the way of making foreign trade by electronic commerce.

Many foreign trade experts predict that although the world economy will recover and external demand improve in 2014, the traditional price advantage of China's foreign trade has been greatly weakened, and the degree of innovation will determine the transcript of foreign trade. Zheng Yuesheng, director general of the Comprehensive Statistics Department of the General Administration of customs, warned that for domestic enterprises, the foreign trade development mode must be actively transformed as soon as possible, and the added value of products will be continuously improved.

"Changing the mode of foreign trade development" is difficult to achieve overnight, so in 2014, coastal provinces have lowered the target of foreign trade growth. Relative to Guangdong's total import and export volume growth target of 5% in 2013, Guangdong's foreign trade import and export target was set at 1% in 2014, and Jiangsu's foreign trade growth target in 2013 was 5%.

　　 The growth rate of foreign trade is 7.5%.

In the face of the "double cold days" in the development of foreign trade in the East and West, how to determine the target of national foreign trade growth in 2014? Huo Jianguo said that in March, the target of foreign trade growth in 2014 will be announced during the two sessions of the national conference. From the current discussion, the target of foreign trade is set at 7.5%, which is basically the same as the growth of the national economy.

The goal of 7.5% is a comprehensive consideration of the whole country. In January 16th, Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, summed up the growth of foreign trade in the central region last year by 13.6% in the summary of the foreign trade situation in 2013. The growth of foreign trade in the western region increased by 17.7%, while that in the eastern region increased by only 6.6%. However, in the eastern region, foreign trade accounted for 79% of the total value of imports and exports in the whole country, so the overall impact on the whole was relatively large. In 2013, the growth rate of foreign trade and imports and exports was 7.6%. "The expected growth of foreign trade in 2014 is hard to judge accurately and is generally not considered to be higher than the level of 2013".

It is understood that the Ministry of Commerce recently made a statistical survey of more than 1900 key foreign trade enterprises, indicating that the export orders of enterprises in recent years have been restored. In December 2013, the sum of export orders increased by 32.1%, and for the first time since September, it has recovered to more than 30%. Orders fell by 24%, and by 3 percentage points. The improvement of the order situation stimulated the export confidence index of the enterprises to 102.9, an increase of 2.9 percentage points and a return to the border line, indicating that the enterprises are cautiously optimistic about the future export situation.

however Shen Dan Yang It is reminding that the import and export data of the first quarter of 2014 are likely to fluctuate in the first quarter of the year, due to the high cost, shortage of funds, intensified competition and other factors. In order to achieve stable development of foreign trade this year, we must at least solve three major problems, namely, the sluggish external demand, rising costs, and accelerating the transfer of industries and orders.