A new round of reshuffle has begun, and these central provinces have fallen behind

Every reporter: Dan Zhongkui Every editor: Yang Huan

Foreign trade is a "barometer" that reflects the regional economic situation and the vitality of opening up. Especially under the influence of a variety of unexpected factors in the international market, the import and export situation of foreign trade in the first quarter of this year has attracted much attention.

Up to now, the General Administration of Customs has released the foreign trade import and export data of 31 provinces across the country. Looking back at the first quarter of 2023, there are 7 provinces in the country with negative growth rates in foreign trade imports and exports, and the number of provinces with negative foreign trade growth in the first quarter of this year has expanded to 10, and the trend of differentiation between different regions is more obvious.

In contrast, the growth rate of foreign trade imports and exports in Tibet, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, Sichuan, and Tianjin has successfully "turned positive" compared with the same period last year, while Shanghai, Liaoning, Yunnan, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Hunan, Henan, and Jiangxi have fallen into negative growth compared with the same period last year......

Among them, Tibet led the country with a growth rate of 216.7%, while Jiangxi ranked at the bottom with a growth rate of -39.4%. Such drastic changes have also led to quiet changes in the territory of the country's foreign trade provinces.

For example, Tianjin surpassed Liaoning, Jiangxi, and Henan to advance to the 9th place in the country, and Anhui surpassed Hunan, Liaoning, Jiangxi, and Henan to advance to the 10th place in the country, rewriting the strength pattern of the top ten camps in one fell swoop. At the same time, Guangxi, Chongqing, Hubei, Hebei, Shaanxi, Xinjiang and other provinces have also risen to varying degrees.

What does this changing landscape mean, and what are the driving factors behind it?

6 provinces "turned positive", Tianjin and Anhui ranked among the top ten

Judging from the current situation, many major foreign trade provinces are gradually getting out of the predicament.

In the first quarter of last year, Tianjin, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Shaanxi, Chongqing, Shanxi, Tibet and other 7 provinces had negative foreign trade import and export growth, while in the same period this year, except for Chongqing (the decline narrowed to -5.6%), the rest of the provinces have turned positive.

According to the data, from January to March this year, the growth rate of foreign trade import and export in Tianjin, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Shaanxi, Shanxi and Tibet increased by 9.2, 13, 15.8, 21, 52 and 256.2 percentage points respectively compared with the same period last year. Even Chongqing, which has not yet turned positive, has increased by 6.3 percentage points year-on-year.

This reflects that the foreign trade situation of the provinces with negative growth last year has improved significantly in the first quarter of this year. At the same time, many provinces have continued to maintain steady progress. According to the data, 15 provinces, including Xinjiang, Shanxi, Guizhou and Jilin, maintained positive growth in imports and exports in the first quarter of this year.

From the perspective of regional pattern, as the second largest province in the country's foreign trade, Jiangsu's growth rate has surpassed Zhejiang, and the gap between the total import and export volume of the two provinces has been re-widened from 66.59 billion yuan to 90.61 billion yuan, further increasing the depth of the moat.

Similarly, the growth rate of Sichuan's foreign trade import and export has picked up rapidly, while the old rival Henan has fallen into the quagmire of negative growth, and it has been unable to shake the status of Sichuan's eighth largest foreign trade province in a short period of time.

In this context, Tianjin has successively overtaken Liaoning, Jiangxi, and Henan to rank ninth in the country, becoming the next "new opponent" to challenge Sichuan, a major foreign trade province.

In the first quarter of this year, Tianjin's total export value was 94.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.5%, while the total import value still failed to turn positive.

Judging from the first two months of this year, Tianjin's major export commodities such as mechanical and electrical products, steel, agricultural products, medical materials and pharmaceuticals all achieved growth, with growth rates of 25.1%, 10.6%, 10.6% and 2.8% respectively. At the same time, the export of ships and automobiles increased by 5.2 times and 3.7 times respectively, and the performance was very strong.

This is also the core factor supporting the jump in Tianjin's foreign trade ranking. Of course, there is still a gap of nearly 50 billion yuan between Tianjin and Sichuan, and it is not easy to catch up and surpass in a short period of time.

At the same time that Tianjin completed a historic breakthrough, Anhui also completed a counterattack with an import and export growth rate of 8.6%, continuously surpassing Hunan, Liaoning, Jiangxi and Henan, and becoming the "goalkeeper" of the top ten camps in the country's foreign trade.

"In the first quarter, the total import and export value of Anhui Province ranked 10th and 1st in the country and central respectively, up 4 and 3 places respectively over the same period last year. Jiang Kaiyuan, deputy director of Hefei Customs, revealed at a press conference.

In fact, in addition to Anhui and Tianjin, Guangxi, Chongqing, Hubei, Hebei, Shaanxi, Xinjiang, Hainan, Shanxi, Tibet and other 9 provinces also increased their import and export scale by 1~3 places compared with the same period last year. These provinces are also important challengers to the current provincial pattern of foreign trade.

The differentiation between cold and warm was obvious, and the 10 provinces showed negative growth

Under the situation that the overall foreign trade data in the first quarter is improving, the trend of provincial foreign trade differentiation is becoming more and more obvious.

In the first quarter of 2023, 7 provinces experienced negative growth in foreign trade, while the number of provinces with negative growth in the first quarter of this year has expanded to 10, including Shanghai, Liaoning, Chongqing, Yunnan, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Hunan, Henan and Jiangxi.

These provinces with negative foreign trade growth have accounted for nearly one-third of the country, conveying a chill.

"The current foreign trade situation is not optimistic, especially in March. This is mainly due to the decline in orders from developed countries such as the United States, Europe and Japan, except for the 'new three' (new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, photovoltaic products), many of the other mechanical and electrical products and other exports have declined. Xu Hongcai, deputy director of the Economic Policy Committee of the Chinese Society for Policy Sciences, analyzed that the performance of foreign trade in various regions is seriously differentiated, and some provinces in the central and western regions have fallen significantly, and coastal provinces have performed better, which is in line with expectations.

He believes that against the backdrop of increasing challenges in foreign trade, the competitiveness of exports in the central and western regions will certainly be challenged. First of all, the geographical advantage is not obvious, and secondly, the ability to respond to market changes is relatively weak. New products such as the "new three" are generally laid out in the coastal provinces, and they have taken the lead in carrying out structural adjustments, and "the response of the central and western regions may be a little slower."

In the first quarter of this year, the total import and export value of Henan, Hunan and Jiangxi was 158.83 billion yuan, 133.56 billion yuan and 104.16 billion yuan respectively, with growth rates of -23.4%, -23.3% and -39.4% respectively, ranking at the bottom of the country.

Specifically, the total export value of Henan, Hunan and Jiangxi was 97.56 billion yuan, 75.29 billion yuan and 68.43 billion yuan respectively, with a growth rate of -29.3%, -38.3% and -47.5% respectively.

This sharp decline in foreign trade has caused Henan's total import and export volume to fall from 9th to 14th, Jiangxi from 10th to 19th, and Hunan from 13th to 17th, with Tianjin, Anhui and Chongqing taking over.

Image source: Photo.com 600678439

In the view of Bai Ming, a member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, the proportion of the "new three" in these provinces is not much, and it is greatly affected by trade protectionism and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and exports to the European and American markets have declined significantly.

As the three provinces with the most severe decline in foreign trade, Henan, Hunan and Jiangxi are mainly exporting mechanical and electrical products. According to last year's data, Henan's mobile phones, automobiles and other mechanical and electrical products accounted for 64.9% of the province's export value (mobile phones accounted for 45.6%), Hunan's rail locomotives, construction machinery and equipment and other mechanical and electrical products accounted for more than 40%, Jiangxi's electronic components, flat panel display modules and other mechanical and electrical products accounted for 51.4%.

These industries are affected by cyclical factors or changes in the international market, and all of them show a slowdown in growth. Taking Henan as an example, in the first two months of this year, Foxconn's import and export was 42.99 billion yuan, down 53.1%, accounting for 40.3% of Henan's total foreign trade value in the same period, accounting for a decrease of 19.1 percentage points, and lowering the province's foreign trade growth rate by 31.5 percentage points.

Even at the beginning of this year, the Jiangxi Provincial Information Center had made an expectation that "the total export volume of foreign trade will decline by 8%" in the "Analysis of Jiangxi's Economic Situation in 2023 and Outlook for 2024", but now it seems that the situation is more severe.

Among the 11 cities in Jiangxi Province, the import and export growth rates of Ganzhou and Fuzhou were 23.8% and 6.0% respectively, while the remaining 9 cities fell into negative growth, and Pingxiang, Jingdezhen, Jiujiang and Yichun fell by more than 70%.

At the same time, the import and export scale of Heilongjiang, Yunnan, Jilin and Qinghai in the first quarter retreated one place, ranking 21st, 23rd, 26th and 31st in the country respectively, and the development situation of foreign trade is not optimistic.

Compete for the "new three" to promote the transformation and upgrading of foreign trade

For the regional pattern of foreign trade in the first quarter, many experts have mentioned structural adjustment.

"I think the decline in the growth rate of foreign trade in the province is largely due to the difference in industrial structure and trade structure. Bai Ming also mentioned that foreign trade provinces such as Guangdong and Jiangsu have performed well, and they have developed "new three" or ships.

He believes that the trend of differentiation of provincial foreign trade performance has a lot to do with the product structure of the "new three", and the provinces that lay out the "new three" or related industrial chains will benefit more from the development of foreign trade, while the foreign trade of provinces with less content of the "new three" is easy to fall, and even some are suppressed by trade protectionism.

For example, in the first quarter, the mainland's exports of mechanical and electrical products reached 3.39 trillion yuan, an increase of 6.8 percent, accounting for 59.2 percent of the total export value, of which computers and their parts, automobiles, and ships increased by 8.6 percent, 21.7 percent, and 113.1 percent respectively.

Further specific to the "new three" such as electric manned vehicles, the total export in the first quarter was 264.69 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 66.9%, accounting for 1.7 percentage points of the mainland's exports, reaching 4.7%. In the past year, the "new three" exports exceeded the trillion yuan mark for the first time, reaching 1.06 trillion yuan, accounting for 4.46% of the total exports.

Among them, the Yangtze River Delta region exported new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, photovoltaics and other "new three" products exports of 541.92 billion yuan, an increase of 19.7 percent, accounting for 51.2 percent of the country, at the same time, Guangdong's "new three" products exported a total of 143.62 billion yuan, an increase of 33.7 percent, accounting for 13.55 percent of the country.

Image source: Photo.com 600861337

This is also an important driving factor for the recovery of foreign trade in coastal provinces in the first quarter of this year. Lv Daliang, spokesman of the General Administration of Customs and director of the Department of Statistics and Analysis, said that in the first quarter of this year, the mainland's "new three" exports to more than 200 countries and regions around the world have export records, of which exports to the top five markets of the European Union, the United States, ASEAN, South Korea and the United Kingdom increased by 88.7%, 88.1%, 103.5%, 121.7% and 118.2% respectively, accounting for 71.6% of the total export value of the "new three".

This is obviously of great significance to the adjustment of the foreign trade structure and the growth of the ability to resist risks. Even Jiangxi, which had the lowest foreign trade growth rate in the first quarter, still achieved outstanding growth in the "new three" -

For example, the export of electric manned vehicles was 1.593 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3024.6%, and the export of solar cells was 8.815 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.7%. However, the rest of the categories of mechanical and electrical products and steel and other major export products have seen a large area of negative growth, resulting in a single-quarter decline of 95.62 billion yuan in total import and export, almost halved.

"It's obviously not as competitive as neighboring provinces like Guangdong. In the past, when Guangdong was under pressure, it promoted the replacement of cages and birds, and moved some industries to Jiangxi, Hunan and other places nearby. Now Guangdong, Jiangsu and other coastal provinces have risen up on the 'new three', and more and more elements have begun to gather in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta. Bai Ming believes that the former is diffusion, and the latter is absorption, and the performance is different in different periods.

In the process of a new round of foreign trade restructuring, on the one hand, the new products represented by the "new three" will open up greater growth space, and on the other hand, emerging market countries such as Southeast Asia will form a certain substitution, "some provinces (development industries) with serious decline are colliding with Southeast Asia."

This is also a challenge that many central and western provinces must face. From the current point of view, whether it is the eastern, central, or western regions, the vast majority of provinces have invariably focused on the "new three" such as electric manned vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar cells, hoping to use this as an incision to promote the transformation of industrial structure and the upgrading of foreign trade structure. From the city of new energy vehicles, the capital of lithium batteries, the capital of photovoltaic and other rounds of fierce competition, in fact, there is no lack of such considerations behind it.

Of course, this does not mean that everyone should lay out the "new three", but to seize the window of foreign trade transformation and upgrading.

Just like at present, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Suzhou and other major foreign trade cities are rushing to cross e-commerce, and they all want to break the path dependence with the help of the reform of foreign trade methods, and find new development momentum in the deep integration of industry and industry, industry and market.

From this point of view, some new industrial tracks have begun to release more and more energy, and some new channels are brewing greater changes.

National Business Daily