In recent years, against the backdrop of a complex and ever-changing international situation, the momentum of global economic growth has been weak, trade protectionism has prevailed, the world openness index has declined, and the growth rate of global trade has even been lower than the growth rate of global GDP. However, my country's foreign trade has shown strong resilience and has accelerated. Data show that in the first 11 months of this year, the total value of my country's import and export of goods was 39.79 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.9%, setting a new record for the same period in history.

In order to further consolidate the achievements of foreign trade and help it grow continuously, the country has taken active actions and issued a series of policy "combination punches" to protect the development of foreign trade from multiple dimensions, and continuously promote the vigorous development of new foreign trade formats and new models, making it a new driving force for my country's foreign trade growth. Next, let's take a closer look at these policy measures.

1. Comprehensive review of the policy combination

1. Increase financial support

• Expand the scale and coverage of export credit insurance underwriting: support enterprises to explore diversified markets, encourage insurance companies to increase underwriting support for specialized and innovative "little giants" and "hidden champions" and other enterprises, and expand the underwriting of the export credit insurance industry chain.
• Strengthen credit supply in the foreign trade sector: The Export-Import Bank of China will strengthen credit supply in the foreign trade sector to better meet the financing needs of different types of foreign trade enterprises. Banks are encouraged to optimize financial services for foreign trade enterprises and increase financing support for small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises on the premise of conducting authenticity review of trade background and effectively controlling risks.
• Optimize cross-border trade settlement: Guide banking institutions to optimize their overseas layout and enhance their service and support capabilities for enterprises to explore international markets. Strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination and cooperation, maintain the basic stability of the RMB exchange rate at a reasonable and balanced level, encourage financial institutions to provide more exchange rate risk management products for foreign trade enterprises, and help enterprises improve their exchange rate risk management level.

2. Cultivating new momentum for foreign trade

• Promote the development of cross-border e-commerce: Promote the construction of overseas smart logistics platforms, explore the construction of cross-border e-commerce service platforms, and provide enterprises with overseas legal and tax resource docking services. Organize cross-border e-commerce enterprises to connect with overseas smart logistics platforms, and support places with conditions to hold cross-border e-commerce trade fairs and supply and demand docking meetings.
• Promote the development of green trade: strengthen the connection between third-party carbon service agencies and foreign trade enterprises, and actively promote the innovative development of green trade.
• Promote innovative development of bonded maintenance: study and issue a new batch of comprehensive bonded area maintenance product catalogues, the second batch of free trade pilot zone "two-end outside" bonded maintenance product catalogues, and support a new batch of "two-end outside" bonded maintenance pilot projects in comprehensive bonded areas and outside free trade pilot zones, and "two-end outside" bonded remanufacturing pilot projects in comprehensive bonded areas.

3. Strengthen service guarantee for foreign trade enterprises

• Facilitate cross-border business travel: Attract and facilitate cross-border business travel, and steadily promote the signing of visa-free agreements with more countries. As of November 2024, my country has achieved full visa-free access with 25 countries.
• Support cooperation between foreign trade enterprises and shipping companies: Support foreign trade enterprises and shipping companies to strengthen strategic cooperation, organize local foreign trade enterprises and foreign trade transportation companies to carry out docking, encourage shipping companies to develop online platforms, and guide shipping companies to optimize route layout.
• Increase support for reducing burdens and stabilizing employment: implement policies such as unemployment insurance repayments for stabilizing employment, entrepreneurship guarantee loans and interest subsidies.

2. Positive impact on foreign trade business

1. Market expansion and order acquisition

• Accelerate the development of diversified markets: Expand the scale and coverage of export credit insurance to make companies more confident when exploring emerging markets and high-risk regions, thereby encouraging companies to actively expand diversified international markets and reduce excessive reliance on traditional European and American markets.
• Unleashing demand in emerging markets: By signing visa exemption agreements with more countries and other measures to facilitate cross-border travel of business personnel, China has promoted trade and personnel exchanges between China and emerging market countries, which will help further tap the trade potential of emerging markets and unleash demand in emerging markets.

2. Business operations and competitiveness enhancement

• Optimization of the financing environment: Increasing financing support for foreign trade enterprises, especially for small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises, has eased the financial pressure on enterprises, enabling them to better carry out production and operation, technological research and development, market expansion and other activities, thereby enhancing the competitiveness and development vitality of enterprises.
• Enhanced risk management capabilities: Financial institutions are encouraged to provide more exchange rate risk management products for foreign trade enterprises, helping them to improve their exchange rate risk management capabilities and enabling them to operate more stably in international market competition.

3. Industrial upgrading and innovative development

• New business forms such as cross-border e-commerce are booming: policies such as promoting the construction of overseas smart logistics platforms and supporting the construction of cross-border e-commerce service platforms have provided better logistics and service support for cross-border e-commerce companies, promoted the rapid development of the cross-border e-commerce industry, and made it a new engine for foreign trade growth.
• Green trade and innovation-driven: Promoting the development of green trade and strengthening the connection between third-party carbon service agencies and foreign trade enterprises will help promote the green transformation and upgrading of the foreign trade industry, improve the added value and international competitiveness of products, and also conform to the trend of global green development.

4. Trade facilitation and cost reduction

• Improved customs clearance facilitation: The General Administration of Customs has implemented measures such as relaxing the declaration time limit for deep processing carry-over of processing trade, which has improved the customs clearance efficiency of enterprises and reduced their logistics and time costs.
• Improved import facilitation: Improve import policies for recycled copper and aluminum raw materials, expand imports of recycled resources, and support imports of key equipment, energy resources and other products. This will help companies obtain more high-quality imported resources, reduce raw material costs and improve production efficiency.

Conclusion

In summary, the series of policy combinations issued by my country to boost foreign trade growth have had a positive and far-reaching impact on foreign trade business, including financial support, cultivating new drivers, and strengthening service guarantees.

Although there are still many uncertainties in the global economic situation and foreign trade development still faces certain challenges, my country has a solid industrial foundation, constantly innovative foreign trade models and a continuously improving policy support system. It can be expected that my country's foreign trade business will continue to maintain a positive development trend. Of course, the development of foreign trade business also requires foreign trade enterprises to pay close attention to the relevant national policy trends, make full use of policy dividends, and actively respond to various challenges.