Data signals steady foreign trade growth

China's foreign trade, supported by resurging overseas demand, the country's free trade measures and various industrial upgrading efforts, is expected to experience steady growth in 2023, government officials and analysts said on Thursday.

With global demand picking up and product quality improving further, China's foreign trade will continue to advance this year, they said, emphasizing that the exports of mechanical and electrical products — such as new energy vehicles, household appliances and solar panels — will effectively bolster the country's foreign trade growth in the coming months.

China's foreign trade in the first quarter of 2023 reached 9.89 trillion yuan ($1.44 trillion), up 4.8 percent year-on-year, data from the General Administration of Customs showed.

Lyu Daliang, a spokesman for the administration, said the first quarter's data underlines the resilience of China's foreign trade and lays a solid foundation for stable and high-quality foreign trade growth this year.

"The recovery of trade is expected to continue as China's overall economic operation improves," said Lyu, emphasizing that the country's sound economic fundamentals remain unchanged.

China's exports are likely to maintain stable and moderate growth starting from the second quarter, thanks to factors including European countries' demand for Chinese new energy products and the ongoing structural upgrades in China's foreign trade as reflected in more diversified export destinations, according to Zhou Maohua, an analyst at China Everbright Bank.

He predicted that China's export growth rate for the entire year is likely to surpass the growth rate of the global economy.

According to customs data, China's trade value with economies involved in the Belt and Road Initiative surged 16.8 percent year-on-year, accounting for 34.6 percent of its overall foreign trade in the first quarter. Foreign trade with other signatory countries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement rose 7.3 percent year-on-year.

The RCEP agreement and the Belt and Road Initiative will continue to boost the nation's foreign trade and its overall economic growth this year, said Liu Qing, vice-president of the Beijing-based China Institute of International Studies.

Official data shows that new drivers are taking shape within the trade sector, as China has seen a 66.9 percent increase in exports in three categories of green products — solar batteries, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles. These products contributed to 2 percentage points of export growth in the first quarter.

With many foreign retailers running out of stock since late last year, a large number of global businesspeople have started to order from Chinese exporters, said Bai Ming, deputy director of international market research at the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

Many of them are traveling to China to participate in trade fairs and visit the factories owned by their Chinese partners, further easing concerns about the nation's 2023 export outlook, he said.

Xu Bing, a spokesman for the upcoming 133rd China Import and Export Fair, or the Canton Fair, scheduled from Saturday to May 5 in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, said the grand event will accommodate a record number of companies — 34,933, compared with 25,000 last time — from both home and abroad.

As of Thursday, buyers from 226 countries and regions, including developed and emerging markets, had registered to attend the fair's offline and online exhibitions.

China has built incredible industrial clusters over the past 20 years, particular in the Yangtze River and Pearl River delta regions, where global investors can find a lot of items they need for assembly of various products, much more than in most other countries, said Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

"These clusters will be very difficult to replicate elsewhere outside China," he added.