Recently, the Ministry of Commerce issued the Plan of Foreign Trade Development in the 13th Five-year Plan Period. “ The Plan” clearly explicit the general idea, target tasks and safeguard measures of China’s foreign trade development during the 13th Five Year period. It is a guide to action which can guide the work of foreign trade authorities at all levels and provide reference for foreign trade enterprises when carrying out business activities.

 

The Plan points out that foreign trade development not only has a solid foundation, but also faces severe challenges during “the 13th Five Year” period. The international environment and domestic conditions of China’s foreign trade development have undergone profound changes with the winding recovery of the world economy for the profound adjustment, the complication of international economic and trade relations, the entrance of China’s economic to a new normal, the weakening of our country’s traditional comparative advantages and the transfer of our industries and orders to the neighboring countries. At the same time, China still has many favorable conditions. For example, our long-term good fundamentals on foreign trade development has not changed; our industrial supplementary advantages with developed and developing countries has not changed; the accelerated trend of structural adjustment and power conversion of our foreign trade has not changed. But we must profoundly understand and accurately grasp the new situation and new features of foreign trade development, seize the opportunity and pragmatically response to the challenges.

 

The Plan emphasizes that foreign trade work must be in accordance with the requirements of the Eighteenth National People’s Congress and the Third, Forth, Fifth, Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth National People’s Congress. It pointed out that We should thoroughly implement the spirit of the series of important speeches made by General Secretary Xi Jinping and practice new development concept, so as to promote the supply side of structural reform as the main line, and then to promote the construction of “One Belt and One Road” to guide the opening to the outside world. We should also vigorously implement the strategy of importing and exporting excellent technology, accelerate the transformation of foreign trade development mode, adjust the structural rotational force, consolidate and enhance the traditional competitive advantage, cultivate new competitive advantages. Therefore, we can promote the transformation of foreign trade to a better quality, good prices, excellent import and export so as to consolidate the status of a big trading nation and promote the process of becoming a strong trade power.

 

The Plan requires us to strive to optimize the following five aspects, that are promoting the international market layout, the domestic regional distribution, foreign trade commodity structure, the main business structure and trade mode, and transform other five aspects as follow, promoting the import and export forms, competitive edges, growth momentum, business environment and the status in the governance of global economy to achieve the further optimization for foreign trade structure, accelerate the transformation of development momentum, and further enhance the quality and efficiency of foreign trade development, consolidate the status of trade power and ultimately make important progress for the construction of trade power.

 

The Plan puts forward eight major tasks for foreign trade: fostering new competitive advantages for foreign trade; promoting import and export trade to a high point; enhancing transnational operation capacity of foreign trade enterprises; improving trade and cooperation level with the countries along “One Belt and One Road”; enhancing the innovative development of processing trade and border trade; promoting foreign trade transformation, upgrading base and trade platform as well as the “three-building” of international marketing network.

 

The Plan emphasizes five safeguard measures for foreign trade development. The first is to improve the foreign trade policy system, including deepening the reform for foreign trade management system, improving fiscal and taxation policies, financial services and public service capacity. Secondly, we should play the auxo-action of the bilateral investment on trade, promote the combination between foreign investment cooperation and trade as well as the quality and level of the utilization of foreign capital. Thirdly, we should create a business environment that is legalized, internationalized and facilitated, improve the legal system of foreign trade, optimize the market environment of fair competition and improve the level of trade facilitation. Fourthly, we will deepen international cooperation and win-win international economic and trade relations, speed up the implementation of the FTA strategy, enhance our voice in international economic and trade rules and actively respond to trade friction. Finally, we will also strengthen organizational leadership and work security mechanism.

 

Compared with previous Plans, the outstanding features of this one are as follows:

 

In the development concepts and goals, this one pays more attention to structural adjustment when stressing the steady growth in foreign trade at the same time. It starts its works from structural reform of the foreign supply side to improve new momentum of the sustainable development of foreign trade. The Plan does not set any quantitative index for the increasing speed, but to refine the adjustment targets of enterprises structure, and put forward “five optimizing” on foreign trade structure and “ five transformation” on motive force of development. This adjustment is in line with the profound changes in the economic globalization, the new background of Chinese economy entering the new normal and the universal law of world trade development, and it is also an objective need for China’s foreign trade to enter into a new stage. We should also get rid of the digital and the speed complex; convert our short-term steady growth rate to long-term adjustment structure; cultivate new advantages and new momentum and transfer a big trade power to a strong trade power.

 

With regard to the main tasks and measures, it emphasizes on the perfection of the foreign trade policy system, and at the same times, it pays more attention to the auxo-action that industries and bilateral investment made on foreign trade, the optimizing of the domestic business environment and international development environment and the dependence on innovation for driving development. So we should strengthen the supervision during and after the trade, promote trade facilitation, strengthen the construction of credit system of foreign trade enterprises; what’s more, we should also pay more attention to trade and industry integration, focus on promoting innovation-driven, and strengthen the coordination between trade policy and industrial policy, support enterprises to enhance their core competitiveness from the source, and promote the transformation and upgrading of processing trade. We should extremely play the auxo-action of the bilateral investment on trade, foster new advantages of attracting investment with the business environment as the core, accelerate brand development and the construction of international marketing service network as well as cultivate transnational corporations. Finally, we will deepen international cooperation and win-win international economic and trade relations, actively promote the reform of the global governance system and the formulation of the rules which can lead multilateral, regional and bilateral international economic and trade, speed up the implementation of the FTA strategy, and actively respond to trade friction.

 

Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou, January 10, 2017