On January 13, the State Council Information Office held a press conference to introduce the annual import and export situation in 2022. General Administration of Customs spokesman Lv Daliang said that in 2022, China's foreign trade imports and exports overcame the challenges of the impact of multiple factors beyond expectations and achieved stable growth on the basis of a high base in 2021, the scale of which exceeded the 40 trillion yuan mark for the first time, making a positive contribution to sound economic development.

According to customs statistics, the total value of China's import and export of goods trade in 2022 was RMB 42.07 trillion, an increase of 7.7% over 2021.

"We believe that the main pulling factors for the current foreign trade to maintain growth are the following." Lv Daliang introduced.

First, there is a market for exports, and the main products have sufficient competitive advantage. From the market point of view, 2022 China's exports to ASEAN, the EU and other major trading partners have maintained rapid growth; accelerated development of emerging markets, exports to countries along the "Belt and Road" grew by 20%, boosting overall export growth of 6.1 percentage points, exports to Africa, Latin America grew by 14.8%, 14.1%.

From a product perspective, in 2022, China's exports of industrial products grew 9.9%, driving overall export growth of 9.4 percentage points. Labor-intensive products exports to maintain rapid growth, solar batteries, lithium batteries, electric passenger cars and other green low-carbon products export growth rate are more than 60%, the rapid growth of new export momentum. According to the latest data, China's current international market share of exports is 14.7%, ranking first in the world for 14 consecutive years.

Second, imports are supported by the potential of domestic demand. 2022, China co-ordinates the two big picture of domestic and international, co-ordinate epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development, co-ordinate development and security, steady economic development, the country's industrial value added above the scale, fixed asset investment and other major economic indicators to maintain growth, providing strong support for the growth of imports.

In 2022, China's imports of intermediate products grew by 7.5%, pulling the overall import growth of 5.9 percentage points. In addition, the high level of international commodity prices to a certain extent also pulled the value of imports to grow.

Third, the policy has support, foreign trade development of the endogenous power is strong. 2022, the country introduced a package of stable economic policies and successive measures in the field of foreign trade involved in ensuring smooth passage, increase financial support for fiscal and taxation, encourage the development of new foreign trade, support foreign trade enterprises to ensure orders to expand the market, and constantly improve trade security and facilitation level. With the continued release of the effectiveness of these policy measures, the main body of China's foreign trade vitality effectively stimulated.

In 2022, the number of foreign trade enterprises with actual import and export performance increased by 5.6% over the previous year, private enterprises, foreign-invested enterprises, state-owned enterprises and other three major categories of foreign trade subjects give full play to their respective advantages, import and export operation performance is robust.

On the next stage of foreign trade trends, Lv Daliang said that the current difficulties and challenges facing the development of China's foreign trade is still more, at the same time, this year, China's economy is expected to rebound in general, foreign trade development also has a number of favorable conditions, to promote the stability of foreign trade scale, excellent structure with solid support.