Though the world economy is under depression, the Chinese economy still keeps its powerful momentum. Its trade surplus hit the historic high in September, showing its stable foundation of anti-crisis.
Though subjected to the decreasing demand of the leading economies after the financial crisis, the total volume of the import and export in China in the first nine months of this year still reached nearly 2 trillion US dollars, up 25.2% from the same period of last year. Meanwhile, the trade surplus in September hit the historic high at the volume of 29.3 billion US dollars.
China General Administration of Customs issued a copy of data on October 13. According to the data, China’s total volume of the import and export in September was 243.5 billion US dollars, with an increase of 21.4%. The volume of export of that month was 136.4 billion US dollars, up 21.5%; the volume of import was 107.1 billion US dollars, increasing by 21.3%.
The new record of the trade surplus in September was mainly attributed to the slowdown of the import amplification. Because of the spread of the sub-prime debt crisis, the international goods price decreased in the case of the market capital escape. This lowered the import prices and decreased the amplification of the import. Meanwhile, the import volume of last September was the previous record, so the year-on-year growth rate in this September was comparatively small.
In order to deal with the stress of the enterprises brought by the slowdown of the foreign demand, China’s government gave more support to the export-oriented enterprises through the bank system. At the same time it increased the subsidies for the enterprises through the tax adjustment. It also slowed down the appreciation of Renminbi. A series of incentive policies urged the Chinese foreign trade to keep stable in September.
Actually, before being affected by the financial crisis, the Chinese foreign trade has begun its slow but effective structure adjustment. From the perspective of the production structure, the import and export of the processing trade in the first 9 months of this year was 803.4 billion US dollars. The growth rate was 13.8%, only one third of one of the import and export of the other trade forms. This reduced the impact of the processing trade which was more prone to be influenced by the foreign demand on the Chinese domestic economy. From the perspective of the product structure, the export of the mechanic and electric products with stronger ability against the fluctuation of the foreign demand was 517 billion US dollars in the first nine months, increasing by 24%. This took 57.4% of China’s total volume of the export at the same period, with a year-on-year growth of 0.8 percent. This was helpful to improve the ability against the risk of the whole Chinese foreign trade.
Li Huiyong, chief macro-economist of Shenyin & Wanguo Securities Co. Ltd, said that the trade data in this September matched the previous expectation. Because there was still effective interval between the real economy and the financial environment, the global economic environment was better than the expectation; meanwhile, China effectively withstood and offset the negative influence of the economic decline through developing the emerging markets like Mideast and increasing the export of the products which the foreigners like. With all those measures, China had a stronger ability to fight against the financial crisis than the other countries.
According to Li’s prediction, the situation of negative increase of the trade surplus in China will change because of the acceleration of the export amplification and the deceleration of the import amplification. The deceleration of the import amplification was mainly attributed to the decrease of the import volume caused by the shrink of the domestic production and the back-fall of the prices of the international bulk commodity. From the perspective of the industrial production data in July and August, the back-fall of the economic growth rate can not be avoided in the third quarter. The GDP growth rate of the third quarter may be 9.7%. The growth rate of export in the fourth quarter of this year is predicted on 22% while the one of import is 21%. The trade surplus will keep the trend of enlargement to110 billion US dollars.
For the long-term trade performance of China, Yi Gang, Vice President of the People’s Bank of China, said in the Eighteenth Ministerial Conference of IMF Committee that the Chinese economic growth would slow down next year because of negative influence of the global financial crisis on China’s export. The Chinese economy will have the support mainly from the domestic consumption demand and the foreign investment. Yet the contribution of the export to the economic development may be null or even negative.
