(Photo/Xinhua)

Against the increasing challenges and concerns in regards to development, China’s foreign trade has a solid foundation thanks to its institutional advantage, industrial advantage, market strength and technological innovations, said a Chinese expert from the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing.

Wu Weihua, a researcher of the UIBE’s Strategy Center for China’s Open Economy and International Technology Cooperation, pointed out that China will maintain high-quality development in foreign trade with a continuously improving business environment and new drivers for economic growth.

The socialist market economy provides an institutional guarantee for China’s foreign trade development, Wu noted.

The central government rolled out a series of measures to stabilize foreign trade, including raising the export rebate rate and shortening the handling time for export tariff rebate applications to 10 working days, he explained.

Such measures lightened the burden on enterprises, enhanced business confidence, and also demonstrated the institutional advantages of the socialist market economy, Wu added.

Over the past seven decades, China has made massive progress in industrial development, especially in the last forty years of reform and opening up, laying a foundation for foreign trade development, the researcher said.

China is the world’s largest manufacturing country with a complete industrial system which plays a key role in the global industrial chain, said Wu.

In 2018, the industrial added value hit 30 trillion yuan in China, and China was the largest producer of more than 220 types of Chinese industrial products. The value added to the strategic emerging industry increased by 8.9 percent year-on-year, while the high-tech manufacturing industry and equipment manufacturing industry rose by 11.7 percent and 8.1 percent, respectively.

On top of that, the expanding domestic market provides power for the country’s sustainable development, thus gaining time for the transformation and upgrading of foreign trade enterprises, Wu said.

China is leading the world with new technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Its technological innovations will boost the development of emerging industries and inject inexhaustible impetus into foreign trade.