China’s Foreign Trade Stable in 2019

Against the background of an unfavorable external environment, China’s foreign trade ran smoothly in 2019. The Chinese government has rolled out a raft of policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade. Meanwhile, new modes of trade such as cross-border e-commerce and market procurement trade have flourished, which helped the entry of more foreign products into China.

For instance, at the first China International Import Expo (CIIE) in 2018, 88 e-commerce enterprises had in-depth cooperation with more than 400 international brands in more than 30 countries. A slew of overseas brands chose Alibaba, JD, Suning and other cross-border e-commerce platforms as their “standard” channels to enter China. At the second CIIE in 2019, JD, an e-commerce giant, announced that it would purchase RMB 400 billion of imported goods in the next three years.

China is nursing a strong domestic market, which propels the growth of China’s overall trade. From January to October of 2019, the total retail sales of consumer goods in China reached RMB 33.48 trillion, an increase of 8.1 percent year-on-year.

1The latest report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicated that the global economic growth rate would drop to three percent in 2019, the lowest since the financial crisis in 2008. Trade protectionism is on the rise. According to the data of the World Trade Organization (WTO), from mid-may to mid-october 2019, the G20 launched 28 trade restriction measures, affecting trade volume valued at US $460.4 billion, an increase of 37 percent year-on-year. The share of goods negatively affected by trade barriers rose from US $1.3 trillion in 2018 to US $1.6 trillion in 2019.

2Denominated in Renminbi, from January to November, China’s imports and exports totaled RMB 28.5 trillion, an increase of 2.5 percent year-on-year. Among them, exports were RMB 15.55 trillion, up 4.5 percent year-on-year; imports were RMB 12.95 trillion, flat year-on-year.

In the whole year, apart from the impacts exerted by the Spring Festival to the trade operation in the first quarter, the year-onyear growth rate of exports and imports as a whole did not show a downward trend. Excluding the first quarter, from April to November, the year-on-year growth rate of exports in a single month ran in the range of 0 percent to 10 percent; the year-on-year growth rate of imports in a single month ran in the range of - 6 percent to 3 percent.

3Compared with other major economies in the world, the cumulative value of China’s import and export trade in US dollars increased by -2.2 percent year-on-year, lower than that of the EU, the U.S., and South Africa, but still higher than other major economies such as Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Russia, and India. In the first eight months of 2019, the cumulative yearon-year growth rate of China’s imports and exports was higher than the average growth rate of major global economies, the Ministry of Commerce said, citing the latest data from the WTO.

4In recent years, the Chinese government and enterprises have been diversifying the country’s trade structure.

After the escalation of trade frictions between China and the U.S. in 2018, this process has accelerated. In the first 11 months of 2019, the cumulative value of China’s imports and exports to the countries of the EU, ASEAN and along the Belt and Road Initiative routes grew by 7.7 percent, 12.7 percent and 9.9 percent respectively, which were higher than its overall foreign trade growth, and their proportion in China’s total foreign trade increased by 0.7, 1.2 and 2 percentage points to 15.4 percent, 14 percent, and 29.3 percent respectively compared with the same period in 2018. ASEAN has replaced the U.S. as China’s second largest trading partner.