Business     

China less reliant on foreign trade

China.org.cn, February 16, 2012

• Containers are handled at Qingdao Port. [CFP]

  China's dependence on foreign trade fell to 50.1 percent in 2011, signalling a shift that China is undergoing to reshape its economic growth, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs (GAC).

  The reliance on foreign trade, a measure of an economy's dependance on international markets, is the ratio of the total trade value in the country's GDP, according to the GAC.

  China's reliance on foreign trade stood at 38.5 percent in 2001, and reached 51.9 percent in 2003 before peaked at 67 percent in 2006, GAC data showed.

  The country's reliance on foreign trade has been above 50 percent for years, indicating that the country has widely participated in global markets, and foreign trades have played an important role in the economy, the GAC said.

  But the country's figure is higher than around 30 percent in other nations such as the United States and India, showing that the economy still have great room to cut the reliance by boosting domestic demand, the GAC said.

  China's foreign trade totaled 23.63 trillion yuan (3.75 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2011, while its GDP stood at 47.16 trillion yuan during the period, official data showed.

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