The COVID-19 outbreak has caused a "cold snap" in global trade. The "semi-annual report" of China's foreign trade released on June 14 has released valuable warmth from many aspects.

Data released by the General Administration of Customs on the same day showed that the total import and export value of China's goods in the first half of the year was 14.24 trillion yuan, down 3.2% year on year and 1.7 percentage points less than that of the previous five months. In June, the growth rate of imports and exports turned positive for the first time this year. China's foreign trade shows the trend of facing difficulties head-on and flying against the wind.

Government and enterprise linkage efforts to stabilize the basic trade disk

"Orders from The Philippines and Myanmar have already been delivered, and orders from Russia are also being prepared for delivery in the next two days." Yuan Zhiyou, chairman of Sichuan Jiayi Co., has had a busy time of late, with the company's motorcycles selling well overseas, with production and sales both rising 14.55 percent in the first half of the year, despite an initial delay of about two months due to the epidemic.

Reporters recently found that with the resumption of work and production continue to advance, China's foreign trade enterprises from "hard scalp dry" to "riveted strength dry".

The data supports this. Customs statistics show that China's foreign trade in the second quarter was 7.67 trillion yuan, down 0.2% from the same period last year, a significant reduction from the 6.4% drop in the first quarter. And throughout the first half of the year, as the largest foreign trade operator, private enterprises import and export 6.42 trillion yuan, an increase of 4.9%, accounting for 45.1% of China's total foreign trade value, 3.5 percentage points higher than the same period last year.

"Even when we stop production, we don't stop. We study the market, we study the product, we innovate, and as soon as the market turns around, our product gets a head start." Yuan Zhiyou's words, said many enterprises rise against the trend "secret."

Enterprises "work hard" and policies "gelievable". Since the beginning of this year, China has rolled out a series of practical measures to increase foreign trade credit supply, increase support for export credit insurance, improve export tax rebate policy, and support the transfer of exports to domestic sales. We are doing our utmost to support foreign trade enterprises in protecting their markets and orders.

"Our exports were down 30 per cent in the first half compared with the same period last year, but sales have recovered and orders are now in September." Lu Zhongqi, chairman of Fujian Allstate Co., which has been engaged in furniture trade for a long time, told reporters that the government has introduced a series of measures to cut taxes and fees to help enterprises tide over the difficulties.

Seize every opportunity to tap the potential of cross-border e-commerce and other new forms of business

In recent years, cross-border e-commerce has become the "top student" in China's new foreign trade format. Under the epidemic, cross-border e-commerce has become a "light cavalry" to stabilize foreign trade with advantages such as online trading, contactless delivery and short trading chain.

Customs statistics show that in the first half of this year, the import and export of the cross-border e-commerce supervision platform of customs increased by 26.2%, among which, the export increased by 28.7% and the import increased by 24.4%, far higher than the overall growth rate of foreign trade.

Li Kuiwen, spokesman for the General Administration of Customs and director of the statistics Department, said that this year, the customs will comprehensively promote supervision measures on the return of goods exported by cross-border e-commerce, solve the problem of "difficult return" of goods exported by cross-border e-commerce, and fully support cross-border e-commerce exporters in selling goods around the world.

On July 1, 10 customs offices in Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing and other cities officially launched the cross-border B2B export pilot program, adding two export supervision codes "9710" and "9810". Enterprises can enjoy facilitation measures such as one-time registration, bit by bit docking, simplified declaration, priority inspection and allowing customs transfer.

In the first week alone, 266,000 cross-border E-COMMERCE B2B export declarations and declaration lists were released by the 10 pilot customs offices, with a value of 250 million yuan.

Another new form of foreign trade, market procurement, is also doing well. In the first half of the year, China's market procurement trade exports increased by 33.4 percent.

Zhuang Rui, deputy director of the Institute of International Economics at the University of International Business and Economics, noted that China's exports of epidemic prevention materials and "home economy" products grew rapidly in the first half of the year. Exports of textiles, including face masks, increased by 32.4%. Exports of medical materials and medicines, medical instruments and equipment increased by 23.6% and 46.4% respectively. Exports of laptops and mobile phones increased by 9.1% and 0.2% respectively, thanks to increased consumption in the "homebound economy".

"New forms of economic development are closely related to new forms of trade." "We can continue to tap the development potential of new forms of foreign trade in the context of normal epidemic prevention and control, and let them play a bigger role in stabilizing foreign trade," she said.

More efforts are needed to stabilize foreign trade

While there are positive signs, this is not a time for optimism.

In its June Global Economic Outlook report, the World Bank predicted the global economy would shrink 5.2 percent by 2020, "the worst recession since World War II." The International Monetary Fund expects the global economy to shrink 4.9% this year. The World Trade Organization earlier forecast that global trade would shrink between 13 and 32 percent this year.

China's manufacturing purchasing managers' index for June showed new export orders at 42.6 per cent and imports at 47.0 per cent, rising month-on-month but still below the tipping point.

It should be noted that some countries are gradually "unblocking" the epidemic, but the epidemic is still spreading around the world, adding economic and trade frictions and other factors of instability and uncertainty remain high, and China's foreign trade situation remains complex and severe.

"The more unstable and uncertain the external environment is, the more firmly we must run our own affairs." Zhang Yansheng, chief researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said China should focus on creating a pattern in which domestic and international cycles play a major role and both domestic and international cycles promote each other.

Some foreign trade enterprises told reporters that the state has recently made several arrangements in export tax rebate, credit, insurance and other aspects to benefit enterprises, hoping that the good policy will be implemented as soon as possible, so that enterprises will have a greater sense of gain.

"China's foreign trade development is highly resilient and has great room for maneuver." 'As the effects of a series of policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade continue to be released, we are confident to stabilize the basic trend of foreign trade,' Mr. Li said.

Source: Xinhuanet