Looking at the development trend of foreign trade, the cumulative decline in China's foreign trade exports has narrowed for five consecutive months, and the trend of foreign trade stabilizing and improving has not changed. How to further expand opening up to the outside world, replicate and promote the trade facilitation measures of the Pilot Free Trade Zone as soon as possible, and at the same time give full play to the role of two-way investment in promoting foreign trade, are the focus of China's foreign trade work in the next stage -

Held on August 16 The State Council executive meeting pointed out that in the face of the complex and severe international market environment, all regions and departments have implemented a series of national policies to promote stable growth of foreign trade and improve quality and efficiency, and have achieved positive results, and China's foreign economy has continued to develop. The meeting proposed that we should focus on increasing the implementation of existing policies and promote the stabilization and recovery of import and export.

On August 17, Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shen Danyang said that from the perspective of foreign trade development trends, the cumulative decline in China¡¯s foreign trade exports has narrowed for five consecutive months, and foreign trade exports are better than those of the United States, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Russia, India and other major economies in the world. The trend of China's foreign trade stabilizing and improving has not changed.

The free trade zone is an important carrier of opening up

¡°The free trade pilot zone is very good for exploring wider opening up, new business models, and new regulatory models. Exploration." On August 17, Zhao Ping, director of the International Trade Research Department of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, pointed out in an interview with a reporter from the Economic Daily that from the perspective of the current focus of opening up, it is best to explore the experience of opening up in China by further expanding opening up. The first way is the free trade pilot zone, which is an important vehicle for expanding opening up to the outside world.

Zhao Ping said that taking Shanghai as an example, Shanghai has accumulated a lot of experience in exploring the opening up of the service industry, and has also established a set of systems for the supervision of cross-border e-commerce. "China's several free trade pilot zones all have different focuses on industry, and they will have different experiences in exploring the supervision of funds in different industries and customs clearance models," Zhao Ping said. Opening up foreign trade faces great challenges, but what about foreign investment management? There is also a step-by-step process of exploration. The free trade pilot zone can explore different supervision and management experiences based on different industries.

Relevant data from the Ministry of Commerce show that various pilot tasks in China¡¯s four free trade pilot zones in Shanghai, Guangdong, Tianjin, and Fujian have been fully rolled out, and the overall plan implementation rate exceeds 90%. In the first five months of this year, a total of 69,177 companies were established in Shanghai, Guangdong, Tianjin, and Fujian Pilot Free Trade Zones. At present, the various pilot trade zones are boldly exploring accelerating the construction of a new open economic system and have found out a lot of reform pilot experience that can be replicated and promoted. First, continue to deepen the reform of the investment management system with negative list management as the core. The four pilot free trade zones have in-depth piloted the pre-establishment national treatment plus negative list management model for foreign investment, continued to expand the reform of the commercial registration system, and promoted "one-stop acceptance" for enterprise establishment and "one-stop" services for foreign investment cooperation. Secondly, with trade facilitation as the focus, the innovation of trade supervision system has achieved remarkable results. The port management department continues to optimize the supervision model of "relaxation on the first line and safe and efficient control on the second line". The "single window" for international trade is constantly optimized, and the customs clearance efficiency in the respective trade pilot zones has increased by about 40% on average. Third, we will steadily launch innovative financial opening-up measures aimed at improving the quality and level of serving the real economy. These experiences will be promoted and implemented after being evaluated by a third party and following necessary procedures.

Two-way investment drives trade growth

Currently, the challenge facing China¡¯s foreign trade is that the production cost advantage of labor-intensive products in China is weakening. Moving to Southeast Asian countries, how to drive trade growth through investment is particularly important in this case.

Zhao Ping pointed out that this issue needs to be understood from two aspects. One is the transfer of trade to countries with lower labor costs, such as Vietnam. But if only the processing link can be transferred out, the effect of keeping trade in China will be better. For example, trading through e-commerce platforms in China and keeping R&D, design, downstream channels, etc. in China. The second is to promote the transfer of processing trade to the central and western regions of China. ¡°Only by attracting more investment to move westward can processing trade truly move westward.¡± Zhao Ping said. By introducing foreign capital to the central and western regions, processing trade has formed a complete industrial chain in the central and western regions. In the process of transfer, the cost of the industrial chain has dropped. This will form a competitive advantage for the entire industry chain. Instead of competing with low-cost countries for production costs. In the process of outward transfer of processing trade, through "going out" investment, trade barriers can also be circumvented and investment can promote the development of trade.

Data from the Ministry of Commerce show that from January to July, the actual use of foreign investment in western China was 36.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31%. In addition, since this year, China's foreign direct investment has maintained rapid growth, and the amount of foreign investment has exceeded the amount of foreign capital utilized, making it a net exporter of capital.

The growth rate of new business formats is worth looking forward to

At present, China's foreign trade development shows signs of stabilization, but whether it can continue to grow rapidly in the future still depends on international market demand. Zhao Ping pointed out that the current world market is still in the process of recovery, and the highlight of foreign trade lies in the recovery of business formats. This requires active use of the rapid growth of new business formats to drive foreign trade growth.

Zhao Ping said that business formats such as cross-border e-commerce account for 85% of exports and will support the steady growth of foreign trade. The growth rate of cross-border e-commerce is above 20%, and its role in stabilizing the growth of foreign trade cannot be underestimated. In addition, market procurement-oriented trade pilot zones can also be explored, especially exploring the formation of information sharing mechanisms in different pilot zones so that the needs of foreign suppliers can be met in China. In addition, the regulatory model needs to be further explored. For example, in terms of exports, the export tax rebate policy promotes the development of exports through refunds and exemptions. In aspects such as customs clearance facilitation, we can also innovate regulatory models based on new business formats.

There are some favorable factors for the stabilization of China's foreign trade at present. First, foreign trade expectations are improving, especially the foreign trade export purchasing managers index, which is a leading indicator of foreign trade exports, has turned from negative to positive, which means that foreign trade confidence is recovering. We are more Corresponding policies should be introduced to stabilize confidence. Second, traditional advantages are being restored. In June and July this year, the growth of labor products, especially textiles, footwear, and plastic products, turned from negative to positive, which means that China's traditional advantages in foreign trade are recovering. Third, for major exporting countries, the import and export of China's largest trader of goods, the EU, have shown growth, and more promotional policies can be implemented for regions with relatively strong demand.

"In June and July, some people said that it was due to calculation factors caused by the depreciation of the RMB that China's exports were positive, but I think that China's trade has an obvious trend of stabilization, confidence has turned positive, and leading indicators have turned positive.", Zhao Ping said that China's foreign trade exports may maintain positive growth in the second half of the year, but the growth rate will not be too fast and will be a gradual stabilizing process. Overall, the decline in imports and exports is expected to continue to narrow. (Economic Daily reporter Feng Qiyu and intern Lu Duan)

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