Unveil The Mystery Of China'S Foreign Trade Benefits

The United Nations Trade and Development Organization (UNCTAD) recently issued a report. According to its newly developed global value chain (GVC) database and corresponding statistical methods, China gained only 70% of its gross domestic product, which is only in the middle reaches of 25 major export economies in the world, significantly lower than Russia (91%), India (90%), the United States (89%), Brazil (87%), and Macao. (87%), Saudi Arabia (86%) and Japan (82%), but higher than Germany (63%).

Why is the total volume of China's trade so large that profits from it are not high? Why is it that foreign trade enterprises have been working hard for a year, but the situation is getting more and more difficult? This new statistical method fully explains the confusion and puzzlement of foreign trade people.

　　 Unveil the mystery of China's limited benefits

This moderate level of benefit reflects that. China trade The proportion of export processing is high, the uniqueness in the global division of labor is low, and the added value is not high.

Because of the formation of industrial chains around the world, some manufactured products may cross the national boundaries many times in the process of production instead of being exported and imported in the original sense. According to traditional statistical methods, exports are seen as contributing to the promotion of gross domestic product, while imports contribute negatively to gross domestic product. But according to the added value trade statistics, imports are a driving force for exports. In most economies, about 1/3 of imports are for export.

Referring to the fact that China only gets 70% of its total export value, the Ministry of Commerce's Foreign Trade Research Institute, Bai Guangyu, thinks that, although China's trade has been processed in recent years, Trade The proportion is decreasing year by year, but processing trade is still an important way of trade in China. In particular, a considerable number of foreign trade enterprises have processed, manufactured, and exported imported raw materials and parts to cultivate their own brands or enhance their autonomy in foreign trade. However, they are not included in the statistics of processing trade because they do not conform to the processing trade flow in the strict sense. These foreign trade processing enterprises' dependence on imported products has lowered the domestic added value rate of China's exports.

According to the study of UNCTAD, although the proportion of service trade exports accounts for about 20% of the world's total exports, nearly 50% of the domestic value added products of export products come from the service sector, while the development of China's third industry is relatively backward. This part has also become the reason why our domestic export value-added rate is low.

Zhang Monan, deputy director of the World Economic Research Office of the prediction center of the National Information Center, said China's trade value-added was so low that it was determined by China's position in the global value chain. Over the past ten years, China's foreign trade has expanded rapidly, largely driven by foreign-funded enterprises, especially in the export commodities and trade surplus. According to the statistics of the joint China World Trade Center development organization, in 1991, the proportion of MNCs' merchandise exports accounted for 18.3% of China's merchandise exports, and suddenly increased to 55.3% in 2008, which is significantly higher than that of developed countries. The proportion of France in that time was 15.7%, the United States was 14.9%, Japan was 9.5%, and India was only 3.5%. It is clear that China's foreign trade scale and trade surplus are enlarged by the import and export of multinational companies.

　　 The added value rate should be more comparable.

Is the higher the domestic value-added rate of the export products? The better it is for Bai Guangyu. The rate of domestic added value of export products is only a reflection of the foreign trade situation of a country at a specific stage of development. To better understand the connotation of the index, we should take into account the position and overall development trend of the country in the global division of labor value chain. Some countries rely solely on primary products such as exports of energy and resources. The rate of domestic added value of exports may be very high, but the participation rate of global value chains is very low, which leads to the fact that they can not be well integrated into the global division of labor system, nor can they enjoy all kinds of dividends involved in international division of labor. Bai Guangyu believes that the comparison of domestic value-added rates between countries with similar export commodities or between similar products of different countries may be more meaningful.

Coincidentally, Zhao Yumin, director of the international marketing department of the Ministry of Commerce, expressed a similar view to the international commercial newspaper reporters. "I think China has achieved 70% of its total export value, and is much better than Germany's. Russia, Saudi Arabia and other countries are mainly exporting resource products. The added value is almost entirely from their own country and does not depend on foreign supply chains. China mainly uses labor and capital in the international supply chain. The core of this new trade measurement method is that the shorter the supply chain, the higher the value-added rate in the country. But I think it is not comprehensive to evaluate global trade from this point of view, which may bring unfavorable factors to the development of Global trade. But it reflects the trade surplus and deficit of a country objectively and objectively. She said.