During this year’s Spring Festival, the Changsha-Europe freight trains were in service to facilitate Hunan's foreign trade. In 2020, Hunan’s foreign trade has bucked the trend under the complex international economic and trade situation. It registered double-digit growth and quality has seen improvement throughout the year.

In 2020, Hunan’s foreign trade grew by more than 12% to hit a record high of more than 487 billion yuan. The figure ranked 14th in the country, moving up one place from 2019. The growth was 10.4 percentage points higher than the national foreign trade growth over the period. The import and export volume had a significant increase of 31.2% in the fourth quarter. The provincial foreign trade has achieved leap-forward development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, according to data from the Changsha Customs. Its ranking increased from 19th in 2016 to 14th in 2020.

Since last year, Hunan has made progress while maintaining stability, effectively stabilizing the fundamentals of foreign trade. In the early stage of the epidemic, the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee and the Hunan Provincial People’s Government introduced a series of measures to help foreign trade companies minimize the impact caused by the epidemic. Since March, the province’s foreign trade growth has turned from negative to positive. With the implementation of the "Three Highlands and Four New Missions" strategy, Hunan’s competitiveness in key areas has further improved. Foreign trade has been increasing for three consecutive months since last October.

Export commodities structure continues to be optimized, and the compatibility of imported products and Chinese industries has been enhanced. The growth rate of the technological innovation industry is significantly higher than that of industrial companies with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan, with corresponding proportion continued to rise. The total import and export of high-tech products in 2020 reached more than 91 billion yuan, an increase of 25.7%. The growth was 13.4 percentage points higher than the provincial import and export growth. Hunan's imports of mechanical and electrical products and high-tech products increased rapidly in 2020, increasing by 21.3% and 44.7% respectively.

Emerging business forms have played a significant role in stimulating foreign trade. In 2020, provincial cross-border e-commerce exports exceeded 13 billion yuan, an increase of more than 130%, and market procurement exports reached nearly 7 billion yuan, an increase of 54.5%. New foreign trade business forms have become increasingly active.

Foreign trade platforms are improving. The Hunan Pilot Free Trade Zone was approved in September last year, marking a new start of Hunan's opening-up development. Special customs supervision zones such as comprehensive bonded zones have made progress. The China-Africa economic and trade cooperation pilot zone becomes a key strategic priority. Effective and remarkable results have been made in boosting construction of the West and South Hunan Industrial Transfer Demonstration Zone.

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn. 

Translator: Xiao Juan

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn