China's foreign trade is booming: Last year, it created 180 million jobs, and this year will show its "tiger" power again.

China's foreign trade is booming: Last year, it created 180 million jobs, and this year will show its "tiger" power again.

Foreign trade drives China's annual GDP growth of 1.7 percentage points in 2021, with a contribution rate of 20.9%; the strong development of foreign trade has effectively promoted job stabilization and employment. The number of foreign trade enterprises with import and export performance throughout the year reached 567,000, directly and indirectly driving employment by 1.8% billion people.

In the past 2021, China's foreign trade has confirmed its strong performance with strong data.

China's annual import and export of goods reached 39.1 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.4%, of which exports increased by 21.2% year-on-year and imports increased by 21.5% year-on-year. In dollar terms, China's imports and exports exceeded the US$6 trillion mark for the first time.

From a vertical comparison, after reaching 4 trillion US dollars for the first time in 2013, China's foreign trade has continuously crossed the two major steps of 5 trillion and 6 trillion US dollars in 2021, reaching 6.05 trillion US dollars. This year's increase in foreign trade reached 1.4 trillion US dollars, equivalent to the scale of foreign trade in 2005.

Li Xingqian, director of the Foreign Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce of China, pointed out that in 2021, China's foreign trade will achieve rapid growth, mainly due to four major driving forces: policy, external demand, supply and new business formats. Specifically, a series of policies have continued to exert efforts to stabilize the main body of foreign trade and stabilize market expectations; the global economy is showing a recovery trend as a whole, increasing the demand for Chinese products; New business forms and new models such as cross-border e-commerce are booming, and various platforms and merchants give full play to their advantages in online marketing, contactless transactions, and short-distance distribution to help foreign trade break through against the trend.

The strong performance of foreign trade has provided strong support for China's economic operation. Li Xingqian pointed out that foreign trade will drive China's annual GDP growth of 1.7 percentage points in 2021, with a contribution rate of 20.9%; the strong development of foreign trade has effectively promoted stable employment and employment. The number of foreign trade enterprises with import and export performance throughout the year reached 567,000, directly and indirectly. Drive 180 million jobs. In addition, Li Xingqian said that the outstanding performance of China's foreign trade has also ensured the supply of important resources and key components, which has played an indispensable role in ensuring domestic supply and stable prices and promoting the smooth operation of upstream and downstream industries.

The Year of the Tiger has begun, and how China's foreign trade will develop in 2022 is closely watched by all parties.

Although China's foreign trade has achieved gratifying results in 2021, looking forward to this year, Li Xingqian bluntly said that the pressure on foreign trade is not small: "In general, on the basis of the scale of 6.05 trillion US dollars and the rapid growth of 30% last year, the foreign trade situation this year is very high. The difficulties and pressures of stabilizing growth are unprecedented."

He pointed out that from the perspective of demand, the growth of global external demand faces two major uncertainties.

First, the epidemic has repeatedly delayed the global economic recovery process. The latest report released by the United Nations believes that due to factors such as the new crown pneumonia epidemic, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and rising inflation pressures, the global economic recovery is facing enormous pressure. Global economic growth is expected to slow to 4% this year from 5.5% in 2021. The WTO expects the growth rate of global trade in goods to slow to 4.7% from 10.8% in 2021.

Second, the uneven recovery has led to rising global systemic risks. Affected by the "vaccine gap" and policy gap, the recovery gap between low-income countries and developed economies has continued to widen, with currency depreciation and high inflation. The rapid withdrawal of stimulus policies in some countries may lead to shrinking demand and price fluctuations, which in turn affects the exports of related industries in China.

From the perspective of supply, the global industrial chain supply chain faces two unstable factors.

First, the reconstruction of the international supply chain is accelerating, and the developed economies are unilaterally pursuing industrial return, which is fragmenting the market and reducing the efficiency of global resource allocation.

Second, the global supply chain disorder and bottleneck effect cannot be completely alleviated in the short term. Problems such as high raw material prices, structural imbalance in transportation capacity, and shortage of important components such as chips will continue to bring pressure on foreign trade enterprises, especially small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises, in terms of costs and risks.

In the face of increasing uncertainty in the external environment, Li Xingqian said that we must "fully face up to the difficulties and strengthen our confidence." Based on the current situation, he said that the Ministry of Commerce has designated 2022 as the "Year of Foreign Trade Consolidation and Improvement", which will focus on improving the comprehensive competitiveness of China's foreign trade.

Specific measures include: will fully release the policy effect, further enhance the role of export credit insurance, earnestly do a good job in credit issuance in the field of foreign trade, and enhance the ability of enterprises to deal with exchange rate risks; further improve the level of trade facilitation, and effectively solve difficulties for enterprises. Cultivate various platforms and carriers such as national processing trade industrial parks, import trade promotion innovation demonstration zones, and foreign trade transformation and upgrading bases, and continue to promote smooth logistics and settlement. Give full play to the leading role of cross-border e-commerce, overseas warehouses and other new formats and models, build a digital pilot area for global trade, and promote the healthy development of green trade.

Although the foreign trade pressure in the Year of the Tiger is "unprecedented", Li Xingqian also revealed more confidence to the outside world: "China's foreign trade industry has a solid foundation, and the fundamentals of long-term improvement have not changed. This year, China's foreign trade will insist on maintaining stability and seeking progress while maintaining stability. , Compared with the expansion of quantity, we pay more attention to the improvement of quality. With the joint efforts of various localities, departments and foreign trade enterprises, we are confident that we can achieve a stable opening of foreign trade and maintain a reasonable range of foreign trade throughout the year.”