Zhao Ping: Faced with trade protection, China easily responds with three moves

Currently, trade protectionism is on the rise, geopolitical conflicts are frequent, and coupled with the continuous restructuring of global industrial and supply chains, the uncertainty of the international economic and trade environment continues to intensify. Regarding this, Zhao Ping, the director of the Research Institute of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, stated in the "Deep Talk" column of China Economic Net that trade protectionism and unilateralism policies will bring many negative challenges to global trade and investment, but China's foreign trade has always shown strong resilience. In the face of the complex international situation, China insists on maintaining a high level of certainty in opening up to the outside world and effectively hedging against various uncertainties in the external environment through three important measures:

We must actively promote the integration of trade and investment. Through overseas warehouses, overseas assembly bases, after-sales maintenance centers, and localized service networks, enterprises can bring domestic parts, technical equipment, and management capabilities out, forming a cycle of "investment driven trade, service driven export". This can not only avoid some trade barriers, but also enhance the responsiveness to local markets.

Secondly, we must vigorously develop intermediate goods trade. Intermediate goods trade is the key to consolidating the dominant position in the supply chain. OECD research shows that intermediate inputs account for approximately 56% of global goods trade and are the core link in the operation of global value chains. Through the trade of intermediate goods such as components, equipment, and materials, as well as trade in services, China can deeply embed itself in the regional supply chain and enhance its pivotal position in the regional industrial chain.

Thirdly, we must guide the rational and orderly cross-border layout of the production and supply chain. By retaining domestic research and development, core manufacturing, key components, and standard capabilities, and overseas layout of assembly, warehousing, maintenance, and channel services that are close to the market, further optimizing the global production network, not only helps to stabilize the domestic industrial foundation, but also enhances the ability of enterprises to cope with tariffs, logistics, compliance, and geopolitical risks.

Zhao Ping stated that the three measures of integrated trade and investment, expansion of intermediate goods trade, and cross-border layout of production and supply chains complement each other and work together to build a security barrier for the high-quality development of China's foreign trade. In the future, as China continues to deepen its intermediate goods trade and optimize its trade structure, the core competitiveness of domestic industries will continue to improve. This will not only provide long-term impetus for stable growth in foreign trade and industrial chain resilience, but also enable China to maintain a stable and positive development trend in the complex and ever-changing international economic and trade landscape.