China makes strides in expanding Free Trade Agreement network
China has made strides in expanding the network of free trade areas (FTAs) in 2017. The country has signed two new free trade agreements this year, taking the total number of FTAs to 16, benefiting 24 countries and regions, said Zhang Shaogang, an official at the Ministry of Commerce.
"The next year will be a year of bumper harvest for FTA development, as there will be negotiations on 10 new FTAs and a joint feasibility study of another 10 FTAs," Zhang said.
Zhang also expects solid progress to be achieved on the negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, an FTA scheme of the 10 ASEAN member states and its six FTA partners - China, Australia, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand. "China has vowed to open wider to the world, and accelerating the development of FTAs will be a crucial part of the country's opening-up," said Bai Ming, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.
China's service trade deficit rose in November after two months of declines, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said Wednesday. The deficit stood at 120.8 billion yuan ($18.4 billion) last month, up from 117.5 billion yuan in October, the SAFE data showed.
Income from trade in services was 124.9 billion yuan, while expenditures totaled 245.7 billion yuan. Trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transportation, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing and accounting. China regularly registers a deficit in service trade due to huge domestic demand.
The government has channeled more energy into improving the service sector, including measures to gradually open up the finance, education, culture and medical industries.
Meanwhile, Profits of China's industrial enterprises grew at their slowest pace in seven months in November, but analysts said the profit growth of those firms will not fall sharply in the coming months.
Profits in November rose 14.9 per- cent year-on-year to 785.8 billion yuan ($120.15 billion), compared with 25.1 percent in October, the National Bureau of Statistics said on its website. This was the slowest monthly growth rate since April's 14 percent.
In the first 11 months, profits increased 21.9 percent year-on-year, down from 23.3 percent in the JanuaryOctober period. Mining-related industries registered the fastest profit growth. In the first 11 months, their profits increased 2.9 times to reach 443.4 billion yuan. More than half of the profit growth in that period were contributed by coal mining and washing, iron and steel smelting and processing, chemicals, and oil and natural gas extraction, according to the NBS statement.
Manufacturing industries registered 18.9 percent profit growth in the same period, while profits in the power, heating, gas and water sectors fell 12.8 percent year-on-year, the NBS said.
The lower growth of earnings in November was caused by a slower pace of price rises, He Ping, a senior statistician of the NBS, said in a statement.
"Previous price increases were concentrated in upstream industries like coal and steel. Inflation in those areas is slowing, and the transmission of higher prices to downstream industries hasn't been very strong, which hurts profit margins," Ye Bingnan, an economist at BOC International in Beijing, told Reuters. He from the NBS said: "On the whole, however, China's industrial enterprises have seen their profit-making situation continually improving this year." He said the operational efficiency of Chinese industrial enterprises, for example, has been on the rise. In the first 11 months, the costs of major industrial enterprises fell 0.5 percent year-on-year.
Their leverage levels have also fallen, indicating lower operational risks, He said. By the end of November, the asset-liability ratio of major industrial firms was 55.8 percent, down by half a percentage point compared with a year ago, he said. High-tech manufacturing enterprises had stronger profit-making capacity in the January-November period, according to He.
Although China's economic growth is expected to be slightly slower next year, analysts said its industrial enterprises may continue to register high profit growth rates.