Canton Fair shows that China’s foreign trade still faces complicated and severe situation

At the concluding press conference for the 124th Canton Fair, Xu Bing, spokesperson and Deputy Secretary General of Canton Fair, Deputy Director General of China Foreign Trade Centre, introduced that buyer attendance and export transaction of this session both showed a slight decline. Buyer attendance totaled 189,812 from 215 countries (regions), down by 1.11% over the 122nd session. The accumulated export transaction of this session totaled 206.494 billion RMB Yuan (or 29.86 billion US dollars), a decrease of 1% over the 122nd session.

Xu said that in terms of market, transaction with Japan. ASEAN ten countries, BRICS countries and South Korea increased by74.4%、11.4%、7.2%、2.5% respectively; with US, Australia, Canada and EU decreased by30.3%, 8.9%, 7.3%, 0.8% respectively. In terms of industry, transaction made in transportation tools, machinery equipment, building and decoration materials, electronic consumer products and information products, bath equipment rose by24.8%, 21.1%, 20.0%, 15.1%, 7.6% respectively while that in textile and garments, household appliance was down by13.0% and 6.7% respectively.

According to exhibitors, export since this year has been maintained steady while progress was also made. 87.1% of companies in machinery and electronics sector enjoyed growing or maintained export volume in the first three quarters compared with same period of last year; 82.4% of companies said that the number of orders kept increasing or maintained the same level over the same period of last year; 80.6% of companies forecast that 2018 export would be better or at least maintained the level of last year. Yet considering rising cost of domestic raw materials and labor and greater influence of the China-US trade frictions, exhibitors also worried about a grim export situation next year.

Xu said that as the barometer of China’s foreign trade, Canton Fair has indicated that China’s foreign trade development is still facing many uncertainties and unstable factors next year from buyer attendance tendency and export transaction data. However as China’s advances the reform on supply front and issues policy measures on the central and local level, new momentum is foreign trade development is forming and companies have made new progress in market diversification. These are all favorable condition and important foundation for foreign trade development. Taking into account various factors, it is predicted that foreign trade this year will keep a stable growth and the quality will be further improved.

Canton Fair Press Center