Roll out the Red Carpet for Foreign Imports

Greater Opportunities

Since the beginning of reform and opening-up, China’s foreign trade has continuously expanded and leapfrogged, significantly contributing to the country’s opening-up and its economic and social development.

As its economy upgrades and improves in both quality and efficiency, China is offering the world better-quality products. In 2017 the volume of China’s commodity imports and exports increased by 14.2 percent, the highest in six years. China has become the world’s largest goods trading nation. Meanwhile, the quality of its foreign trade has developed by leaps and bounds, as shown in the increasing percentage of high-tech, high-quality, and high-value-added products in its exports and their growing market shares – high-tech products accounts for about 30 percent of China’s total exports.

Minister Zhong Shan pointed out that lots of innovative enterprises have sprung up in China. With ever-growing international competitiveness, they have become new engines for China’s foreign trade. In addition, cross-border e-commerce of China tops the world in size, accessible to most countries worldwide and well received among local consumers. The driving force for China’s foreign trade is changing.

At the same time, the huge Chinese market remains a destination for global goods. Domestic consumption, which contributed more than 65 percent to the Chinese GDP last year, is now a pillar of the Chinese economy. China, as the most populous country, the second largest economy, and the runner-up in both imports and consumption in the world, has entered a new stage of ever-expanding consumption, thus highlighting that there is large room for import growth.

At a press conference on November 9, 2017, Gao Feng, a spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, announced that China was expected to import goods and services worth more than US $10 trillion over the next five years. He said that CIIE aimed to share the huge Chinese market with other countries by expanding imports and further opening to the outside.

On January 23, 2018, when Foreign Minister Wang Yi addressed the China-CELAC Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum, he specifically mentioned the CIIE and expressed China’s willingness to “open its market and share its development opportunities with other countries.”