China’s foreign trade will weather through strain

Despite of a grim outlook, both China’s imports and exports will see a moderate growth at the beginning of 2012, the commerce ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said in Beijing Wednesday.

Shen admitted that currently China is challenged by a worrisome foreign trade situation. However, positive factors such as cheap yet high-quality labors, stable policies will help overcome the shadow cast by serious and complicated business environment.

According to the customs’ statistics, China’s gross value of imports and exports exceeded 3.64 trillion U.S. dollars in 2011, up 22.5 percent than a year earlier. Trade surplus maintained the decline trend since 2009, reaching 155.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2011 with a cut of 14.5 percent.

It’s noteworthy that the performance with its largest trade partner, the European Union, was outperformed by that with emerging markets in the past year.

For example, the overall trade volume between China and Brazil in 2011 enjoyed an upswing of 34.5 percent, much higher than 18.3 percent with Europe whose prolonged debt crisis curbed export demand.

Shen said the Chinese government has beefed up the support to domestic exporters especially the medium and small enterprises (SEMs). It is highly possible that Chinese firms will keep competitiveness and achieve a steady growth in 2012 if China’s economy insists on the endeavor of rebalancing and restructuring.