Since this year, China’s foreign trade has bucked the trend and shown strong resilience despite sluggish external demand, falling prices and last year’s high base. Monitoring by MOFCOM, Customs and key provinces and municipalities indicates that the year-end performance of trade has basically maintained the momentum of Q4. We have confidence in the overall stability of trade scale and international market shares to meet the annual goal of promoting stability and upgrading quality.

For 2024, we should see favourable conditions build up for the Chinese economy and foreign trade as well as the uncertainties and instabilities in external environment. On the one hand, the world economy is making a difficult recovery with the rebound in global trade painfully slow. UNCTAD forecasts that in 2023, global trade value in goods will fall by 7.5% and that 2024 will be highly uncertain and pessimistic overall. Geopolitical spillover and increasing trade protectionist restrictions, among other unfavourable impacts have continued. On the other hand, the long-term positive fundamentals of the Chinese economy haven’t changed, with the dividends of opening up showing continuously and potentials of new products and business types unleashed in foreign trade. We are confident that with the support of the policy package to stabilize the economy and foreign trade and the joint efforts of foreign trading companies, China’s foreign trade will maintain the stabilizing and upward trend. Thank you.