Vice Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan: to stabilize foreign trade

June 22, the 6th edition of the Economic Daily published the "profound understanding of the contribution of foreign trade Development to the national economy," a signed article by the Vice Minister of Commerce, China, as follows: a profound understanding of the contribution of foreign trade Development to national economy at present, the international financial crisis is still spreading, external demand shrinkage is The Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to foreign trade work, since this year, the timely introduction of a series of support for foreign Trade development policy measures, achieved positive results.　　May 27, the State Council convened the 66th meeting, from the foreign trade to the national economic development has an important contribution to the height, put forward to do everything possible to stabilize foreign trade, to achieve the goal of protecting the market share of the target task.　　Why do everything possible to stabilize foreign trade reform and opening-up 30 years experience shows that foreign trade to stimulate economic growth, increase employment, promote industrial upgrading and other aspects of the increasingly prominent role in national economic development plays an increasingly important role. First, to stimulate economic growth. From 1978 to 2008, China's foreign trade development expanded from 20.6 billion U.S. dollars to 2.5616 trillion U.S. dollars, an annual growth of 18%. According to the National Bureau of Statistics and related institutions, the annual average contribution rate of export to economic growth has reached 20% in the past 30 years, which has become one of the "troika" driving economic growth. Through the development of foreign trade, China eased the foreign exchange, market and technical bottlenecks, and successfully achieved economic take-off.　　In 2008, China's GDP and exports leaped to the third and second place in the world respectively. Second, expand employment. The development of foreign trade, the advantages of China's labor resources, fully transformed into product cost advantages, and then transformed into an international competitive advantage, so that foreign trade has become the export of labor services. According to estimates, foreign trade directly driven employment of about 80 million, of which 60% from the rural transfer of labor, agricultural and textile and other traditional labor-intensive export industries directly absorbed employment of about 50 million.　　In the special period of economic system transformation, industrial structure adjustment and rural labor transfer, foreign trade transformed our surplus labor force into "demographic dividend", which greatly alleviated the employment pressure in China, and promoted social stability and overall urban-rural development. Third, promote industrial upgrading. On the one hand, through the development of processing trade and other means, successfully grasp the international industry transfer provided 3 major opportunities to promote domestic industrial upgrading, technological progress, to achieve total factor production efficiency; On the other hand, through the importation of domestic shortage of resources, key equipment and advanced technology, to lengthen the national economic development of "short Promote the adjustment of industrial structure and the coordinated development of national economy. At present, China's crude oil, iron ore and other important resources around half through the import security supply, net imports of agricultural products about 500 million acres of land production, has introduced a number of advanced technology and equipment, through digestion, absorption, innovation, and constantly enhance the ability of independent innovation.　　According to the research Group of National Bureau of Statistics, the contribution rate of import to productivity progress in China is about 46%. Four, increase revenue. Tariffs and customs levies and excise tax are directly related to import and export. Last year, only foreign trade links to tax revenue of up to 9161billion yuan, accounting for 16.9% of the national tax revenue.　　If coupled with high foreign-funded enterprises tax revenue, the export-oriented economy brings about one-third of the total tax revenue, greatly enriched the country's financial resources. Five, accelerate the system and management innovation. Through the development of foreign trade, adhere to the open to promote reform, promote development, promote innovation. Especially after China's entry into the WTO, our economic system has been in line with international practice, which has greatly promoted the formation and development of socialist market economy system with Chinese characteristics. From the microscopic perspective, enterprises through the development of foreign trade business, and constantly learn foreign enterprises advanced management experience and management model.　　Some enterprises also successfully transformed, from the generation of processing to the independent brand change, from pure foreign trade to trade and industrial technology integration, the emergence of a number of internationally renowned brands. Over the past 30 years, China's foreign Trade development has realized a huge leap from quantity to quality, which is one of the important achievements of China's reform and opening-up.　　It can be said that without the rapid development of foreign trade, China is difficult to achieve today in the economic scale, taxation and employment and other fields of achievement. How to do a good job of stabilizing foreign trade from the current situation of foreign trade development, China's foreign trade growth this year will appear a certain extent of decline, the future will enter a period of low growth period, stable foreign trade should focus on the market share. We should be guided by the scientific concept of development, in accordance with the unified deployment of the party Central Committee and the State Council, and strive to stabilize foreign trade work: first, pay attention to policy implementation, create a good foreign trade development environment. In the near future, the Ministry of Commerce will fully implement the views of the State Council on maintaining the steady growth of foreign trade and the 66th executive meeting of the Department in conjunction with relevant departments. Perfect export credit insurance policy and export tax policy, vigorously solve the financing difficulties of foreign trade enterprises, further reduce the burden of foreign trade enterprises, improve the level of trade facilitation, improve the processing trade policy, support "go out" to drive exports. Encourage local bold innovation, explore the international rules, suitable for local practical development of foreign trade road.　　Strengthen publicity and guidance, create a harmonious and stable and relaxed public opinion environment. Second, pay attention to structural adjustment, insist on changing the mode of foreign trade development. Optimization of commodity structure, based on quality and science and technology trade, supporting the advantages of products, labor-intensive products and High-tech products exports, increase the independent intellectual property rights, independent brand products to promote the export. Optimize the market structure, further implement the market diversification strategy, while stabilizing the traditional market, vigorously develop the growth of good, potential of the emerging market often optimize the main structure, in giving full play to the role of large enterprises, increase the support for small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises, play its institutional, mechanism advantages.　　Optimize the trade mode, continue to exert the advantage of the general trade to the domestic industry correlation degree, the impetus strength is strong, actively promote the processing trade transformation and escalation, and accelerate the promotion of border trade in regional and subregional economic cooperation. Third, focus on capacity-building and actively respond to the international financial crisis. From the government level, the Ministry of Commerce will improve the public service system of foreign trade with the relevant departments, improve the public service capacity, at the same time, overall use of foreign trade, foreign capital, "go out" and other relevant policies to achieve all types of businessMutual promotion, coordinated development, improve global resource allocation capacity.　　From the enterprise level, to enhance the ability of independent innovation, improve the technology, quality and brand value of export products, enhance market development ability, make full use of various platforms such as Canton Fair, and "go out" and other channels, improve the ability of policy application, use good enough to stabilize the current foreign trade promotion policies. How to correctly grasp several cognition problems of stabilizing foreign trade (i) high dependence on foreign trade. There is a view that China's foreign trade dependence is too high, increasing the external risk of economic development. The degree of dependence on foreign trade is one of the reference indicators to measure the economic extroversion of a country or region. With the deepening of reform and opening-up, China's dependence on foreign trade rose from 9.7% in 1978 to 20% to 30% in the 80 of the last century and 30% to 40% in 90, but still below the world average. Entering the new century, China's dependence on foreign trade rose from 43.9% in 2000 to 60% in 2008, beginning to surpass the world average. China's foreign trade dependence on increasing, one is the result of China's rapid development of foreign trade, nearly 30 years, China's foreign trade growth rate is 3 times times the average level of the world, and the second is consistent with the trend of world trade dependence, according to statistics, The average dependence of world trade rose from 35.9% in 1980 to 41% in 2008; third, it has typical processing trade characteristics, such as excluding processing trade statistics, China's foreign trade dependence is still lower than the world average level; four is not necessarily related to external economic risks. Some developed countries have long maintained a high degree of foreign trade dependence, last year, Germany and South Korea respectively as high as 70% and 92%, Singapore and other countries relying on trade for a long time more than 100%. As a high speed developing country, the formation of China's high foreign trade dependence degree has its particularity and stage.　　In the long run, because our country has the double advantage of large economy scale and domestic market potential, China's foreign trade dependence degree will be stable. (b) The issue of foreign trade surplus.　　There is a view that China's foreign trade surplus is too large, exacerbating macroeconomic imbalances, should be through the export to reduce the surplus. In theory, whether a country maintains a trade surplus is largely determined by the international competitiveness of its products or services. It is inevitable and long-term for China to keep the surplus at present, to grasp the opportunity of economic globalization, to hold the favorable opportunity of complementing the industrial structure of the developed countries and to improve the international competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. From the scale, from 2004 to 2008, China accumulated a surplus of 868.9 billion U.S. dollars, less than Germany's 1.1161 trillion U.S. dollars. For example, in the past 30 years of history, China's cumulative surplus is also lower than Japan, which is basically commensurate with the size of our economy and the total amount of foreign trade.　　To reduce the surplus can not be exported through the pressure, but the need to expand imports, vigorously implement the "go out" strategy to promote the balance of international payments basic equilibrium. (iii) Development of processing trade.　　It is argued that the value-added of processing trade in China is low, which brings pressure to the resource environment and advocates restricting the development of processing trade. vigorously develop processing tradeIs our country's successful integration into the global division of labor system, and effectively promote the new industrialization of the important results, but also the development of foreign trade and the use of foreign capital of the central embodiment. such as restricting the development of processing trade, on the one hand will limit the play of China's comparative advantage, weaken the international competitiveness of export products, on the other hand will increase employment pressure, not conducive to social stability, after all, processing trade carries about 35 million people's employment. Therefore, in the past and the future for quite a long period of time, the development of processing trade in line with China's basic national conditions.　　At the same time, we should actively promote the transformation and upgrading of processing trade, extend the industrial chain, enhance the value chain. (d) The policy effectiveness of stabilizing foreign trade.　　There is a view that the current sharp decline in foreign trade is mainly due to the lack of external demand, the policy results are not significant. Theoretically, in the absence of external demand, the policy effect of export promotion is not obvious during the economic boom period. But it should be noted that the current external demand is only reduced, not completely disappeared. In terms of share, according to WTO statistics, China's exports accounted for only 8.86% of total global exports last year, while Germany and the United States recorded more than 12% in the 90 's, and it is still possible for China to increase its share in international trade. To protect the external market share is to protect the enterprise, the security enterprise is to protect employment, guarantee employment is to guarantee stability, thus to expand domestic demand to create social foundation and material conditions. Structurally, due to the existence of "potato" and "lipstick" effect, low and middle-end necessities of life and non-essential necessities in the global consumption will remain basically stable, and may even grow, open up the international market there is still room.　　At present, the key point of stabilizing foreign trade policy is to clean up the policy measures of the past restrictions on foreign trade development, on the other hand, to introduce some new promotion policies according to the situation. (v) Deterioration of the international trade environment.　　There is a view that, in the case of inadequate external demand, the share will increase trade friction, worsening the international trade environment. In recent years, due to the increasing competitiveness of China's export products, the increase in international market share and the political and economic interests of some countries, our country suffers from increasing trade frictions. In the coming period, by the international financial crisis, international trade will enter the slow growth or negative period, trade friction will also enter a period of time, its form will be constantly renovated, we should have a clear understanding and long-term psychological preparation. At the same time, it should be seen that many protectionist practices violate WTO rules, and history has proved to be the wrong choice to hinder the world economic recovery. To deal with international trade frictions, we should not only maintain a common heart, but also can not be taken lightly, on the one hand, through more bilateral negotiations, strengthen consultation and communication, and properly resolve the friction, to achieve mutual benefit, on the other hand, in accordance with the WTO rules to strengthen negotiations, the greatest extent possible to