By Yang Guomin

In recent years, it has become a subject drawing increasing attention from all sides to transform the growth mode of foreign trade and improve both the quality and the level of foreign trade while maintaining a rapid growth of China's foreign trade.

How to understand the transformation of the growth mode of foreign trade? How to transform the growth mode of foreign trade? Recently, the reporter interviewed Mr. Fu Ziying, the Assistant Minister of Ministry of Commerce of China.

Fu said that China had become a real large trade country; however, China still has a long way to go before it does grow into a trade power.

Although the scale of China's foreign trade has exceeded USD 1 trillion, the per capita volume is only USD880; whereas according to the statistics of WTO, this figure is USD8,427 for the USA, USD7,136 for Japan and USD7,920 for South Korea. China is a large country in terms of the scale of its foreign trade, but a small one in term of the per capita volume of its foreign trade.

Secondly, as far as the export commodity structure is concerned, although the proportion of China's industrial manufactured exports has already exceeded 90 percent of the total export volume, the export of high-tech products only constitutes 28 percent while this figure is generally over 40 percent in developed countries. As to the trade mode, the major trade mode of China's exports is processing trade concentrating on processing and manufacturing with only low added values, which indicates that China is still in a position of relatively low level in the international division system. China is the largest producer of agricultural products in the world, but the proportion of its agricultural product exports only accounts for 3.1 percent of the world trade, whereas the proportion of US' agricultural product exports is as high as 10.2 percent. China is a trade power in terms of quantity but a weak country in terms of the structure.

Thirdly, statistics from the Ministry of Commerce show that in 2003, only less than 20 percent of all Chinese export enterprises owned their own brands; the proportion of the exports with respective independent brands was less than 10 percent of the total export volume, and few brands can be said to be worldly famous. Among the top 500 export enterprises in China, the export volume of the 34 enterprises with famous brands only accounted for 6 percent. Although some enterprises have started to export goods with their own brands, the added value of their brands was relatively low due to a shortage of independent intellectual property rights, especially core technologies. China is a large country in terms of commodities but a small one in terms of brands.   
Fourthly, the proportion of the service trade is an important sign to measure whether a country is a trade power or not. Although China's foreign trade has forged into the third in the world, its service trade only ranks the ninth in the world; the proportion of the export volume of the world service trade is 20 percent of the total volume of goods and service, while that figure in China is only 9.6 percent. The development level of China's service trade is relatively low, mainly concentrating on such fields as tourism, transportation, freight forwarding services and contracted projects abroad, while still lagging far behind in such fields with high added value as financial insurance, investment consultation, technical contracting and commercial retails. China's trade structure characterized by powerful goods trade but fragile service trade hasn't been fundamentally changed.

Fu said that the rapid growth of China's foreign trade is mainly realized through the extensive inputs of such elements like labor, funds, land and resources with a low growing efficiency and quality on a relatively fragile basis. Meanwhile, although China has a comparatively large trade scale, its inferior position in the international division resulted in low trade profits. China's trade scale is mainly supported by OEM; as a result, a plenty of benefits in the trade have been taken away. Therefore, the growth mode simply relying on expansion in terms of quantity has done a lot of harm to China's foreign trade.

China is making efforts to have its gross economic volume doubled in 2020 in comparison to the year 2000, so its foreign trade should also maintain a certain scale correspondingly, which means that the total volume of exports and imports should be doubled, too; however, with a view on China's fundamental situations, it is impossible to realize such a growth rate if it relies on the expansion in terms of quantity and the traditional growth mode, nor can the natural environment burden.

Fu pointed out that currently, the malpractices of the growth mode relying on quantity scale and price advantages have emerged day by day, while the factors restricting the sustained growth of China's foreign trade have been making their appearance as well.

How to accelerate the transformation of the growth mode of foreign trade?

In order to accelerate the transformation of the growth mode of foreign trade, the Ministry of Commerce has launched a series of measures and obtained active results in recent years. For example, encouraging the exports of high-tech products, accelerating the cultivation of independent export brands, and improving the added value of import products, and so on.

Fu said that in the future, China would pay more attention to the prices that it will pay for the development of its trade and give sufficient consideration to such factors as resource waste and environmental pollution in its policy making. China will continue to encourage exports of products with independent intellectual property rights and independent brands, encourage the foreign trade of high-tech products, proposing even stricter requirements for enterprises on such links as products' safety standard, technical standard, employment standard, environmental protection standard and intellectual property rights protection, etc.

Moreover, the coordinative development of trade and ecological environment should be urged through adjustments to its foreign trade structure while getting technology introduction, digestion and innovation integrated and developing core technologies with independent intellectual property rights. China will also make great efforts to carry out brand strategy, improve the added value in its export products and strengthen the non-price competition advantages of domestic products; meanwhile, marketing innovations shall be successfully implemented so as to develop its own exports marketing network, providing more public services and products to the Chinese export enterprises; in the meantime, non-governmental institutions shall also fully play their active role in the expansion of China's foreign trade.