Recently, the Ministry of Commerce (the "MOFCOM") has issued the 13th Five-Year Plan (the "Plan") for the Development of Foreign Trade. As the guidelines to instruct the work of competent departments of foreign trade at all levels and provide reference for foreign-trade enterprises to launch business operations, the Plan clarifies the overall ideology, objectives and assignments safeguard measures in terms of the development of foreign trade in China during the 13th Five-Year Period.

According to the Plan, the development of foreign trade has a solid foundation and is also faced with severe challenges. With the tortuous recovery of global economy in deep adjustment, more complicated international economic and trading relationship and entry of China's economic development to a new normal, profound changes have occurred to the international environment and domestic development conditions for China's development of foreign trade, in which the traditional advantages become weaker and the industries and orders are transferred to the neighboring countries. Meanwhile, with beneficial conditions still existing in China, the fundamental information that the development of foreign trade remains constructive for a long term remains unchanged, as well as the advantage in industrial complementation with the developed and developing countries and the trend of adjustment to foreign-trade structure and the acceleration in the transformation of driving force. It should be necessary to have a deep understanding and accurate grasp of the new situation and characteristics in terms of the development of foreign trade, seize opportunities and give practical response to challenges.

The Plan emphasizes that the foreign trade must be subject to the requirements of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (the "CPC") and the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th plenary meetings of the 18th National Congress of the CPC to practice the new development philosophy by deep implementation of the spirits conveyed in the series of key speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping; focusing on the promotion of the supply-side structural reform and leading the opening-up by promoting the construction of "The Belt and Road", we should vigorously implement the strategy of "quality imports and exports", accelerate the transformation of the foreign-trade development, adjust the structure and transform the impetus, enhance and raise the traditional competitive advantages, cultivate new competitive advantages and promote the transformation of foreign trade to "high quality and low price" and "quality imports and exports" to enhance the status of trading power and promote the progress in building a powerful trading nation.

According to the requirements of the plan, we should make efforts to promote "five optimizations" in respect of the international market layout, domestic regional layout, structure of foreign-trade products and trading forms and "five transformations" in respect of export forms, competitive advantages, growing impetus, business environment and China's status in the governance of global economy to achieve the further optimization of foreign-trade structure, expedite the transformation of development impetus, improve the quality and efficiency of foreign trade development, consolidate China's position as trade power, and make important progress in building up a powerful trading nation.

The Plan specifies eight tasks on foreign trade, which include: accelerating the development of new advantages in foreign trade competition; carrying forward export to mid- and high-end; enhancing the transnational management of foreign-trade enterprises; raising the cooperation with countries along "The Belt and Road" in national trade; promoting the innovative development of processing trade and border trade; developing new forms of foreign trade actively; implementing active import policies; and carrying forward the "three constructions" in terms of the base of transformation and upgrading of foreign trade, trading platform and international marketing network.

The Plan emphasizes safeguard measures for foreign trade in five aspects, which include: improving the system of foreign trade policies, deepening the system reform of foreign-trade management, improving financial and tax policies, improving the financial services and enhancing the public services; giving play to the bilateral investment in the promotion of trade, promoting the combination of foreign investment cooperation and trade and enhancing the quality and level of the utilization of foreign investments; creating a legalized, internationalized and facilitated business environment, improving the legal system of foreign trade, optimizing the market with fair competition and enhancing the facilitation of trade; deepening a mutually beneficial international relationship of economy and trade, accelerate the implementation of "Free-trade-zone" strategy, raising the right of speech of international rules of economy and trade and showing active response to trade frictions; and strengthening the organizational leadership and work safeguard mechanism.
Compared with the past plans, the Plan has the following outstanding characteristics:

In respect of the development philosophy and objectives, the Plan, at the same moment of stable growth of trade, lays more emphasis on the adjusting the structure, making efforts to the structural reform of the supply-side of foreign trade and raising new energy for sustainable development thereof. Without setting any quantitative indicator for acceleration of scales, but refining the objectives of adjustment to structure, the Plan proposes to make efforts to promote the "five optimizations" for structure of foreign trade and achieve the "five transformations" for development impetus. Such adjustment is in line with the overall background where profound changes occur to economic globalization and China's economy enters a new normal and the general rules of global trade development and also the objective need for China's foreign trade to enter a new stage. In order to get rid of the complex of figures and speed, we should make the transformation from short-term stable acceleration to long-term adjustment to structure, cultivation of new advantages and energy and the promotion of the transformation from big trading power to powerful trading power.

In respect of main tasks and measures, the Plan, at the same moment of improvement of foreign-trade policy system, lays more emphasis on giving play to industrial and bilateral investments in their promotion to foreign trade, optimizing the domestic business environment and international development environment and driving the development by relying on innovation. The Plan strengthens the in-process and ex-post supervision, promotes the trade facilitation and enhances the construction of the credit system for foreign-trade enterprises; lays more emphasis on the combination of trade and industries, emphasizes the promotion of innovation-driving, enhances the coordination of trade and industrial policies, supports enterprises to raise the core competitiveness from the sources and promotes the transformation and upgrading of processing trade; lays more emphasis on giving play to the bilateral investment in the promotion to foreign trade, cultivating the new advantage in investment introduction focusing on business environment, accelerating the construction of brand cultivation and international marketing service network and cultivating transnational companies; lays more emphasis on deepening the mutually beneficial international relationship of economy and trade, promoting the reform of global governance system actively, carrying forward the conclusion of the multilateral, regional and bilateral international economic and trading rules, accelerating the implementation of "Free-trade-zone" strategy and showing active response to trade frictions.

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