BEIJING: 2014 is the third straight year for China failing to attain its foreign-trade growth target. China’s foreign trade reached 26.43 trillion yuan (US$4.26 trillion) in value in 2014, up 3.4% in terms of the US dollar, a far cry from the growth target of 7.5%, according to statistics released by the General Administration of Customs (GAC).
Zheng Yaosheng, spokesman of GAC and director of its department of statistics, affirmed the trade performance, predicting that exports will remain languid in the first quarter, in view of the decline of the leading index for exports for the third month in a row, according to National Business Daily.
The paper attributes the lackluster performance in foreign trade to the diminishing advantage of low production costs for export businesses, as well as a drop in investments from developed nations in China’s manufacturing sector. Foreign-invested firms accounted for half of China’s exports in the first 11 months of 2014.
As a result of sagging competitiveness, seven major traditional industries, including apparel and textiles, suffered declines of 0.8 of a percentage point and 2.8 percentage points, respectively, in their market shares in the US and Japan in the first three quarters.
