Measures to help heat up foreign trade

Addressing problems

From a macroeconomic perspective, the momentum of growth in foreign trade at the start of this year was critical yet stagnant, as analysts and economists worried about the lack of orders generated by sluggish global growth.

The central government has repeatedly noted that foreign trade has diminished and has become more complicated. Experts said that some of the specific steps in the new policy document will not only help underpin this year's trade growth, but will also be conducive to improving China's foreign trade structure in the long run.

"For decades, foreign trade development has been one of the major driving forces behind China's growth. This year, with China's foreign trade growth currently evolving, the new guideline has addressed some of the most urgent, pressing issues to help foreign trade companies participating in and placing orders at trade exhibitions, to facilitate the exchange of cross-border business personnel," said Ma Hong, a professor of economics at the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University in Beijing, whose research interest focuses on trade and tariffs.

The new document also proposed several measures that could spark innovation in foreign trade development. These include facilitating trade digitization, cross-border e-commerce, green trade and border trade, and the gradual transfer of processing to less developed central and western regions of the country.

Efforts will also be made to stabilize and expand the import and export volume of key products, including automobiles.

The guideline urged local governments and business associations to set up direct interaction with automobile and shipping companies, and encourage them to sign medium- to long-term agreements. Banks and their overseas institutions are also encouraged to create financial products and services to support automobile overseas' branches.

The guideline also highlighted efforts to expand imports of advanced technological equipment.

"These will contribute to stabilizing China's trade growth momentum and to achieving optimization of its export structure in the medium- to long-term," Ma said.