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Apr“Today, we get together in Dubrovnik, where a country established itself through free trade historically, so the city is also a symbol of free trade. The symbol itself coincides with ‘China-CEEC Cooperation (16+1 Cooperation)’, advocating to jointly safeguard free trade and move ahead with cooperative development through free trade.”
On April 12, the 8th Meeting of Heads of Government of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) was unveiled in this famous historic city. The above-mentioned interpretation of the history of the city by Premier Li Keqiang directly demonstrates the significance of China-CEEC Cooperation, namely driving global trade liberalization.
Trade liberalization is represented by trade facilitation. The Meeting reaped many important fruits, with which all parties would closely cooperate to broaden and upgrade China-CEEC cooperation. Economic and trade cooperation provides fundamental support for 16+1 Cooperation, so focus will be placed on improving trade facilitation level and releasing great potentials for trade development between China and CEEC.
Trade facilitation in essence is customs clearance facilitation, namely guaranteeing smooth customs clearance of goods and exporters’ access to sufficient customs clearance information and fair treatment. According to WTO’s estimation, if trade facilitation is practiced smoothly around the world, global trade cost will decrease by 14.3%, exports will increase by USD 1 trillion and 20 million jobs will be created, per year. It is foreseeable that promotion and implementation of trade facilitation will make China-CEEC trade usher in a new spring.
At present, China-CEEC have carried out customs cooperation in various forms, and will constantly enhance customs cooperation, streamline customs formalities and improve goods customs clearance efficiency, so as to remarkably lower trade costs and further increase the trade volume. Chinese electromechanical products and hi-tech products with powerful competitive advantages will expand their shares in CEEC markets, and agricultural products of CEEC with local characteristics will be marketed to Chinese families, through which all people of the countries will be able to enjoy higher consumption level and better welfare.
The advancement of trade facilitation also relies on a sound mechanism of communication and coordination in bilateral inspection and quarantine. In the future, it will help trade facilitation make breakthrough in the fields of “customs” and “inspection” to speed up conclusion of relevant inspection and quarantine protocols and to enhance the consistency and coordination in safety supervision between China and CEEC, so as to be more favorable for trade development between both parties. In 2018, China realized combination of inspection and quarantine with customs, namely allocating the duties of entry-exit inspection and quarantine of former State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine to the General Administration of Customs, to centrally offer services, thereby reducing previous 223 items necessary for import customs declaration to 138 items and previous 206 items necessary for export customs declaration to 129, 37.8% less. China has made significant efforts in strengthening trade facilitation, and will further coordinate the cooperation mechanism with CEEC, to strive for new breakthroughs in inspection and quarantine cooperation.
China has built multiple trade promotion platforms to fuel trade development with CEEC. In the future, how to make better use of the platforms to support CEEC to participate in and sponsor trade fairs will be a key issue in relevant administrations’ decisions. In fact, the trade between China and CEEC has kept increasing in recent years. In 2018, China reported the trade volume with CEEC of USD 82.23 billion, up 21% y-o-y, with the exports of USD 59.19 billion, up 19.6%, and the imports of USD 23.04 billion, up 24.6%. In view of overall trade situation, however, the trade volume accounts for a very low proportion to China’s total, meaning a great potential for tapping. In the days to come, China will rely on the platforms of China International Import Expo and China-CEEC Investment and Trade Expo to provide CEEC with the green passage for them to export products to China and to strive for their green passages to import Chinese products, thus to realize balanced and rapid development of bilateral trade.
Logistics efficiency directly determines customs clearance efficiency and trade facilitation level. Against the backdrop of China-US trade friction, both parties should make great efforts to develop China-Europe freight trains and multimodal transport, enhance cooperation for facilitation of China-Europe Land-Sea Express, speed up connection of rules and standards, construct logistics centers and promote faster cross-border logistics, which will serve as “hardware” guarantees for trade growth between China and CEEC, and be important measures for realizing the strategy of diversified trade development. We will witness shuttling of China-Europe freight trains full of containers between both ends and smooth transit of Chinese products from China-constructed distribution centers in Central and Eastern Europe, to develop the trade between China and CEEC to a higher level.
The advancement of trade facilitation will not only boost trade development between China and CEEC, but help the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In fact, CEEC play an irreplaceable role in BRI in both economic and political terms. More importantly, CEEC are experiencing deep economic structure adjustment, and their top-priority policy of “opening eastward” has the same idea by coincidence with China’s BRI, meaning high accordance of development strategies and great cooperation potentials between both parties. Currently, “everything is ready, and all that we need is an east wind”. Trade facilitation is the wind, with which the trade between China and CEEC will develop and stride proudly ahead and release endless potential. Meanwhile, boosted by the wind, BRI will be advanced smoothly to keep making breakthroughs one after another.
Wang Xiaosong, research fellow of the National Academy of Development and Strategy, RUC
The original article was published here.
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