China's foreign trade will increase by 20 percent year-on-year and exceed one trillion US dollars this year, said Vice Minister of Commerce (MOC) Yu Guangzhou at a press conference Friday, July 30.

In the first half of the year, the total value of imports and exports hit 522.97 billion US dollars, up 39.1 percent year-on-year, MOC figures show.

Exports amounted to 258.08 billion US dollars, up 35.7 percent while imports totaled 264.9 billion dollars, up 42.6 percent year-on-year.

Growth of electronic and machinery product and hi-tech product exports reached 46.3 percent and 60.9 percent respectively, surpassing the general export growth and taking up 54.2 percent and 27.4 percent of the total exports, Yu said.

"With the phasing-in of China's macro-control measures, monthly exports have been overwhelming imports for two consecutive months so far and changed the trade deficit in the first four months," Yu said.

The actually utilized foreign direct investment in China is expected to remain at 50 billion US dollars this year, and the Chinese overseas investment will exceed 2 billion US dollars.

"In the first six months, contractual FDI reached 72.7 billion US dollars, up 42.7 percent year on year. Actually utilized was 33.9 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 12 percent," Yu said.

The structural quality of utilized FDI was also improved, Yu said, noting that FDI in the hi-tech sector witnessed a significant increase.

In the first six months, contractual FDI in the manufacturing sectors of specific equipment, general equipment and computer and communication facilities have been increased by 195 percent, 75 percent and 73 percent respectively, Yu said.

The number of foreign-funded research and development centers in China has surpassed 600 so far. Over 30 regional headquarters of multinational companies have been established in China, he said.

FDI in China was 53.5 billion US dollars last year, up 1.44 percent.

Meanwhile, China's domestic market witnessed sound growth. The retail sales in China's domestic market hit 2.5 trillion yuan (about 302 billion US dollars) in the first six months, up 12.8 percent year-on-year.

The annual retail sales were expected to increase by over 10 percent to hit 5 trillion yuan (about 604 billion US dollars), Yu said.

But some problems were also hindering China's domestic and foreign trade, Yu noted, blaming the continuous drop of consumption rate, trade protectionism targeting Chinese products, expensive oil, increasing stockpile of some commodities and the short supply of coal, electricity, oil and transportation.

The Vice-Minister vowed to improve the trade environment under the country's WTO commitments in the latter half of this year, and to battle the unfair treatment Chinese enterprises have recently experienced in the international market.

By People's Daily Online