Machinery and electronic products have grown to be the most important driving force of China's foreign trade, accounting for more than half of the country's imports and exports annually, according to the Ministry of Commerce. And foreign-funded enterprises are dominant the business while local private companies are catching up quickly.
For 13 consecutive years, machinery and electronic exports have been China's largest export category. In 2003, more than half of China's exports came from such products and that ratio rose to 57.6 percent in 2007, compared with merely 6.8 percent 30 years ago when China started its reform and opening-up process. The staggering growth is the result of 27.2 percent annual increase over the past 30 years.
The imports have experienced the similar progress. After an average increase of 18 percent annually since 1980, the share of imports of machinery and electronic products in China's total imports rose from 28.2 percent to 52.2 percent.
Foreign companies are the major player in this field. They made nearly three quarters of imports and exports under this category by 2007 and their business are still growing steadily.
Local private businesses, however, are moving ahead rapidly. Although their contribution to the foreign trade of the machinery and electronic products is only 12 percent currently, their increase is faster than their foreign funded peers by 20 percentage points.
The market is expanding. Buyers were from 224 countries and regions while sellers included 194 countries and regions in 2007. The Southeast Asia, Middle East and Africa are the traditional destination. Exports to North America and western Europe are growing fast and remarkable progress have been made in emerging market like Latin America, India and Russia. Japan, the European Union, the US are the major sources of imports.
More than 90 percent of China's machinery and electronic exports are machinery equipment, transport equipment and instruments and apparatus. Exports of energy, material and labor-intensive products are slowing down.
Automobiles show the biggest potential among Chinese brands. China has become the world's largest potential market, the second consumption market and the third largest producer of autos. The country exported 610,000 vehicles out of the 8.88 million it made in 2007.
China is also a major manufacturer and exporter of home appliance on the international market. It is the biggest maker and exporter of refrigerators, washing machines, air-conditioners, color TV, video CD players and micro-ovens.
China is also one of the leading countries in the world in some other sectors in this field. Telecom equipment with Chinese IPR is providing services for more than 500 telecom operators in more than 100 countries. In 2007, China held the biggest new order of ship-building. China has installed and is undertaking more than 17 million kilowatts of large scale coal-fired power generation units with internationally advanced technology.
In a report released last month by the Ministry of Commerce, China's imports and exports are expected to reach 2.6 trillion USD in 2008, a 20 percent year-on-year increase. The latest figure shows that China's machinery and electronic exports and imports grow by 20 percent and 10.9 percent respectively from January to November this year.
By People's Daily Online
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