What is the trade structure and scale of China's foreign trade in the past five years?

Over the years, after a series of reforms and policy adjustments, China has initially established a new foreign trade management system that adapts to the socialist market economy and the prevailing rules of the international economy. The operating mechanism of foreign trade has undergone fundamental changes, the degree of marketization has been greatly improved, and fiscal, monetary and industrial policies have become the main means of macro-control. The single and closed foreign trade management pattern has changed, and the diversification of business entities has brought vitality to the development of foreign trade, which has become one of the main pulling factors of China's foreign trade, especially exports. These have formed and are forming an important foundation for the long-term sustained and rapid development of China's foreign trade in the future. On the other hand, from the above analysis, we can see that there are still many problems and contradictions in China's foreign trade, such as unstable development, slow structural adjustment and lack of high-tech and high value-added products with strong international competitiveness. These deficiencies are manifested in external forms such as the quality of import and export trade, institutional reasons such as imperfect foreign trade regulation and management mechanism, and rooted in the influence of extensive foreign trade growth mode formed under the long-term planned economy system.

From the international environment, in the coming 2 1 century, with the development of economic globalization, China's foreign trade will also face many new opportunities and challenges. First of all, due to the stable economic growth of developed countries, China will obtain favorable conditions for developing international trade on the basis of complementary advantages and horizontal division of labor; Secondly, the increasingly active international capital flow will surely drive the sustained growth of world import and export trade and create good opportunities for China products to enter the international market. However, the vigorous development of newly industrialized countries in East Asia, the rise of South Asian economy and the rise of Latin American economy will further change the world economic structure and form strong competition with China's export development, and the liberalization of trade and investment will further intensify domestic and international market competition. Therefore, how to further improve the foreign trade regulation and control system and management mechanism to meet the requirements of market economy, cultivate leading industries with long-term development potential, improve the international competitiveness of products, promote the rapid growth of import and export trade, and create conditions for the long-term sustained and rapid development of China's economy should become an important topic for China's foreign trade structure adjustment in the cross-century period.

1. Accelerate the reform of foreign trade management system, and gradually establish a foreign trade management system that meets the requirements of market economy and internationally accepted rules. Over the years, China's foreign trade system reform has made remarkable achievements. However, due to the influence of the planned economic system in the past, the phenomenon of relying on administrative means and planned economic methods to determine foreign trade management still exists. The foreign trade control system that effectively uses economic levers such as exchange rate, interest rate and tax rate has not yet been fully formed, and the standardization and legalization level of foreign trade macro-management is not high enough. Therefore, in the next few years, it is still one of the main tasks of China's foreign trade system reform to accelerate the process of "two transformations", promote the marketization of exchange rate, interest rate and tariff rate, and establish a foreign trade operation mechanism that meets the requirements of the socialist market economy. In this process, it is necessary not only to completely change the management functions of the government, but also to strengthen the service functions of commercial foreign trade intermediaries, trade associations, chambers of commerce and other non-governmental market coordination institutions, and promote the supporting reform and coordinated development of management, operation and service.

2. In accordance with the principle of unified policies and consistent competition conditions, promote the diversified development of foreign trade business entities and gradually realize the transformation from the foreign trade management right system to the foreign trade registration system. In recent years, the breaking of the traditional foreign trade monopoly system has brought vitality to China's foreign trade development. However, due to various restrictions on foreign trade management rights and market access, foreign trade management has not yet formed a diversified pattern of full free competition. The superior environment of long-term monopoly operation has also created the internal "physique" of professional foreign trade enterprises that are difficult to adapt to the market competition environment. Therefore, perfecting the management mechanism of foreign trade enterprises and creating a diversified market competition environment are of great significance to the development of China's foreign trade in the cross-century period. In order to achieve this goal, more production enterprises should be given the right to operate foreign trade, and all kinds of enterprises should be encouraged to directly enter the international market to participate in competition. It is necessary to gradually implement cross-industry comprehensive management of commercial foreign trade and finally establish a foreign trade business registration system. Professional foreign trade companies should strengthen their own reforms, improve their operating mechanisms, and gradually embark on a development path centered on economic benefits, so as to improve the intensive degree of enterprise management and scale operating benefits. In short, the diversified competition pattern and the continuous development of various foreign trade operators will play a positive role in cultivating new foreign trade growth points, improving the quality, efficiency and credibility of foreign trade operations, and optimizing the industrial structure and commodity structure.

3. Develop leading industries with competitive advantages, improve the international competitiveness of China products, and optimize the structure of export commodities. The structure of export commodities is still dominated by labor-intensive products, which reflects that China's capital and technology-intensive industries are backward and lack international competitiveness. Even the mechanical and electrical products, whose export proportion is increasing gradually, mostly belong to general industrial finished products, with low processing degree and low scientific and technological content. Therefore, China's exports have long faced strong competition from Southeast Asian countries and other developing countries, and are easily affected by changes in international exchange rates and other cost factors, making it difficult to create a stable environment for export development. Therefore, fundamentally changing this situation is an urgent task to improve the international competitiveness of China's export products. To this end, we must first promote the optimization and upgrading of domestic industrial structure and cultivate leading industries with strong international competitiveness. Make full use of industrial support, preferential policies and other means to accelerate the development of high-tech industries and capital-intensive industries, provide more high value-added products for exports, and improve the international competitiveness of Chinese goods. In the process of structural adjustment of export commodities, we should support high-tech industries such as machinery, electronics and transportation equipment to expand exports and improve the grade of export commodities through credit and other means.

4. Actively and effectively utilize foreign resources, promote overseas investment of China enterprises, and explore new international markets. The increasingly active direct investment since 1980s is one of the main driving forces to promote the rapid development of global international trade. In recent decades, the growth of China's foreign trade has also benefited greatly from the driving role of foreign direct investment. However, at present, the development of overseas investment of China enterprises is slow, and they have just begun to make full use of foreign resources to develop their own economy, expand imports and exports through international production, and open up new international markets. It should be noted that the economies of China and South Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe and Central Asia are highly complementary. The technology and equipment needed by many developing countries have become China's comparative advantages, and the resources such as energy and raw materials urgently needed by China's industrialization development are the advantages of some of them, which fully shows the great potential and unique conditions for China to develop overseas investment and production. China enterprises' investment in developing countries is conducive to promoting the export of technology and machinery and equipment in China, realizing the transfer of some export-oriented industries that have lost their cost advantage in China, developing overseas resources, increasing effective imports and meeting the growing domestic production demand. It can be predicted that with the increasing investment of developing countries in the above-mentioned areas, the market share of bilateral trade between China and these areas will greatly increase, laying a foundation for the long-term and stable development of China's foreign trade in the next century.

5. Accelerate the transformation of processing trade to a trade mode that can effectively improve the processing depth and added value content, and promote the development of upstream industries and the development of the central and western regions. At present, the export of processing trade with low processing degree and low added value accounts for a large proportion of all exports, which is a very prominent problem in China's foreign trade structure. If the import substitution of intermediate inputs in processing trade cannot be realized in the shortest time, the development of related industries can be promoted, and the competitiveness of processed products can be maintained with gradually mature integrated production and technical capabilities, the processing industry will probably become a "rootless industry", and the international competitiveness of export products will be seriously reduced at any time due to the disappearance of labor costs and policy advantages, and the development conditions and trade opportunities of the processing industry will be lost. Therefore, promoting the upgrading and transformation of trade mode structure should be one of the important contents of foreign trade structure adjustment in the cross-century period, and the role of policy orientation in this respect can not be ignored. At present, the main reasons for the inclination of trade mode to processing trade are the low technical level of domestic upstream industries, unstable product quality, excessive inclination of industrial policies to downstream industries, tax included in general export commodities, and weak information and intermediary functions. Therefore, it should be said that it is an effective policy choice to formulate reasonable industrial development policies, encourage the technological progress of upstream industries, adjust trade policies as soon as possible, solve the tax problem of export commodities, and support and encourage the development and growth of various information and intermediary commercial institutions. The change of trade mode is conducive to the development and maturity of upstream industries such as raw materials. Moreover, because the central and western regions have the comparative advantages of rich resources and abundant labor force, China's resource processing industry is mostly concentrated in these regions. The huge demand for domestic resources and resource-processed products will promote the extension of the upstream processing industry chain to the central and western regions, promote the development of the central and western regions, and open up new ways for products from this region to directly enter the international market. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to build a policy system that combines trade policy, industrial policy and regional development policy, and form a good policy environment to promote the development of upstream processing industry and the central and western regions.

6. Deepen the reform of the import system, open the domestic trade market of goods and services in an orderly manner, and establish a standardized market operation mechanism. The direction of China's import system reform is to adapt to the needs of developing an open economy and connecting with the international economy, gradually open the domestic market, and finally establish an import system that is based on economic means such as exchange rate and tariffs, supplemented by industrial policies such as infant industry support, and conforms to the unified rules of the World Trade Organization, creating conditions for China to join the World Trade Organization at an early date, and promoting domestic industrial structure and technological upgrading through introducing fierce competition. According to these objectives, China has made unremitting efforts to open its domestic market and gradually liberalize its trade and investment. It has lowered its import tariffs on its own many times, reducing the average tariff level to 17% in just a few years. At the same time, many non-tariff trade barriers have been removed, and the market opening in the service sector is gradually unfolding. But at present, China still belongs to the ranks of countries with higher tariffs in the world, and the tariff level is even higher than the average level of developing countries 15%. The huge trade surplus caused by slow import growth has become the main cause of trade friction, and too many non-tariff barriers and market access restrictions in service trade are still negative factors affecting the smooth development of multilateral or bilateral trade negotiations. Therefore, the task of opening China's goods and services trade market in the next few years is still very arduous. We should achieve the goal of reducing tariffs to the average level of developing countries ahead of schedule, accelerate the pace of removing non-tariff barriers and opening up the field of service trade, promote the healthy development of import trade, eliminate new trade imbalances, strengthen China's favorable position in multilateral or bilateral trade negotiations, and strive to realize our desire to join the WTO within this century. While opening up the market, we should pay attention to establishing a standardized market operation mechanism, perfecting legal systems such as anti-dumping, countervailing and anti-unfair competition, and creating a fair and reasonable free competition environment.