07:32, August 09, 2016
China should facilitate regional trade and expand global use of renminbi,expert says
China's exports rose by 2.9 percent year-on-year in July, while imports fell by 5.7 percent,leading to a monthly trade surplus of 342.8 billion yuan ($51.45 billion), figures released bythe General Administration of Customs showed on Monday.
The country's foreign trade outlook for the whole year is not optimistic, due to higheroperational costs, loss of production orders and jobs and growing trade friction, said WangDongtang, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Commerce's Department of ForeignTrade.
Export growth in July was 1.6 percentage points higher than in the previous month, whilethe fall in imports increased from 2.3 percent in June.
"As external markets will not fundamentally improve for the rest of this year, China mustspeed up its restructuring of regional trade and value chains, including expanding theglobal use of its currency and facilitating regional trade through more free tradeagreements and connectivity programs," said Yao Weiqun, vice-president of the ShanghaiWTO Affairs Consultation Center.
Trade with the United States, China's second-biggest trade partner, fell by 4.8 percentyear-on-year between January and July, while trade with the Association of SoutheastAsian Nations, its third-largest trade partner, declined by 2.2 percent.
Trade with the European Union, China's biggest trade partner, climbed by 1.8 percentyear-on-year in the first seven months, the GAC data showed.
Song Ge, deputy general manager of Guangzhou Bosma Optoelectronic Technology Co, anoptical products manufacturer in Guangdong province, said that although the company setan export target of $14 million this year, it only reached 42 percent of that amount duringthe first seven months.
"This is because market orders from the EU declined and our latest telescope products inthe US didn't sell as well as we expected earlier this year," said Song.
Song hoped the company could reach its annual export goal by the end of the year, sincesales are expected to pick up in the fourth quarter, a busy sales season for developedmarkets.
China's first refrigerated container train leaves for Moscow
21:04, August 08, 2016
DALIAN, Aug.8 -- China's first refrigerated-container train left for Moscow from northeastChina's Dalian on Monday, marking the opening of a new transport link between the twocountries.
The new refrigerated-freight line is 8,600 km long, with trains taking about 10 days toreach Moscow. The train is carrying products worth 150,000 U.S.dollars, including pearsfrom Hebei, pomelos from Guangdong and garlic from Shandong.
After crossing the border, goods will switch to a Russian freight train in Baikal, Siberia.
The new transport link will shorten the journey time by 60 percent as the old route usedsea and rail travel.
China's refrigerated-product exports to Russia have been on the rise.
Brazil now China's biggest source of beef imports
14:42, August 08, 2016
Imports of beef and other items from the South American country overtakethose from Australia
Limited domestic output and rising per-capita incomes are pushing beef-hungry China toimport the high-protein, low-fat meat in increasing quantities from Brazil.
About a year after recovering from a scare related to mad cow disease, Brazil hassupplanted Australia as the biggest seller of beef to China.
A production deficit is widening in China, and imports are heading for a record.
Brazil's ample supplies and low prices helped companies including JBS SA, Minerva SA andMarfrig Global Foods SA to boost exports to China by 65 percent in the first half of theyear.
While the Chinese eat far more pork than any other meat, per-capita consumption isfalling. At the same time, demand for beef is increasing.
Only the US imports more beef than China. Rapid economic growth over the past decade inChina has created the world's second-largest economy and an expanding middle class thatcan afford more protein in their diets.
At the same time, Brazil has plenty of surplus beef, as domestic demand stagnates, and thecountry's exports are appealing to buyers after its currency plunged last year.
China ended a three-year-old embargo on Brazilian beef imports in May last year, imposedbecause of the mad cow disease epidemic that hit Brazil in 2012.
"China will have a major impact on the beef trade," said Miguel Gularte, head of JBS'sMercosul beef unit. "It's a fantastic market for Brazil" because the Asian country has"hundreds of millions of people moving to consume red meat," he said.
Workers process meat on a production line at the Minerva SA meat processing plant inBarretos, Brazil. [Provided to China Daily]
Per-capita consumption of beef in China will reach a record 3.864 kg this year, comparedwith 3.029 kg a decade ago, according to estimates by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development.
But production has not kept pace, so China's imports this year will jump 22 percent to 1.23million tons, including purchases by Hong Kong, according to the US Department ofAgriculture.
That is an almost fourfold increase from 2012, and imports now account for 36 percent ofdemand, up from 25 percent last year.
Wang Kai, a professor at Nanjing Agricultural University in Jiangsu province, said demandfor lamb in China's western region, particularly in the Ningxia Hui and Xinjiang Uygurautonomous regions, and Qinghai and Gansu provinces, has quickly grown over the pastfive years, mainly because it is getting more expensive to raise cattle in western China,where the economy and livestock industry are less developed than in the easternprovinces.
Because of rising feed prices, limited grazing land and the breeding cycle, China's cattle-raising sector lags behind consumer demand, resulting in higher lamb prices over the pastfive years, according to a report released last December by the Chinese Academy ofAgricultural Sciences.
"As China has found it impossible to grow all of the food it needs and has consequentlyformed closer ties with the world food market, demand for beef, mutton, fruit, wine anddairy products will certainly provide many opportunities for major agricultural produceexporters such as Chile, Brazil, Argentina and the United States."
Bilateral trade between China and Brazil stood at $71.59 billion in 2015, making ChinaBrazil's largest export destination and source of imports, data released by the GeneralAdministration of Customs show.
Not only agricultural products, China has purchased large sums of raw materials fromBrazil over the years, where it has also invested heavily in infrastructure, includinghydropower facilities, construction machinery and automobile production. Chinesecompanies had invested $18.94 billion in Brazil by the end of 2014.
Australia had been China's top foreign beef supplier, but its output declined. That createdan opportunity for Brazil, where a 33 percent plunge in its currency last year because of arecession and political scandal made its exports more appealing to buyers.
Shipments to the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong in the first six months of this year werea combined 265,800 tons, up from 161,000 tons a year earlier, industry data show. Totalexports to all countries rose 12 percent to 736,000 tons.
"There's a lot of tailwinds for the Brazilian industry at this moment," Justin Sherrard, ananimal-protein global strategist at Rabobank, said in a telephone interview from Utrecht,Netherlands.
Brazil almost missed out. A single positive test for mad cow disease in 2012 led to importbans by China and other countries, including South Korea and Japan. The case wasconsidered a "negligible risk," based on criteria established by the World Organization forAnimal Health, because the animal never made it into the food chain. That meant a quickerpath to lifting the ban, which China did in May 2015.
While some forms of Brazilian meat are still restricted, like organs or boned meat, Chinanow permits most common meat cuts including steaks and ground beef, though most of thepurchases are the low-end cuts used in processed meat products. With most of the so-called premium markets including Japan and South Korea still closed to Brazilian beef,most of the country's shipments of prime cuts like steaks end up in Europe.
"China is emerging as the first alternative to Europe for Brazil's premium beef," AntonioCamardelli, head of Brazil's beef industry group, Abiec, said in a telephone interview fromSao Paulo. "There's still a lot of room to increase exports of gourmet beef to China."
There are signs that demand will slow from China buyers who are "pressuring pricesdown," Mercosul's Gularte said. Still, Brazilian shipments to China this year will be twicewhat they were in 2015, he said.
Asia represented 26 percent of exports for Minerva in the year ended in March, making itthe main destination for Sao Paulo-based company's exports. That's up from 18 percent ayear before.
"There are consumers that are willing to pay a premium for having a differential,"Fernando Galletti Queiroz, chief executive officer of Minerva SA, said in an interview in SaoPaulo. "The price gap to Europe is shrinking."
Not only purchasing agricultural products from Brazil, China has also invested more in bothBrazil and Latin America's manufacturing, financial and infrastructure sectors to boostgrowth as it adjusts its trade structure and diversifies investment categories under currentglobal business setting.
China's outbound investment in the non-financial sector of Latin America reached $21.4billion in 2015, surging 67 percent year-on-year. Its investment mainly flowed intocountries including Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and Ecuador, data from the Ministry ofCommerce show.
