China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative is pooling a great number of opportunities for domestic foreign trade enterprises to transform themselves to better fit in the challenging world economy.
Evidently, the infrastructure linking blueprinted under the Belt Road Initiative pulls up China's foreign trade. In 2015, China's Top 500 Foreign Trade Enterprises in 18 key Chinese provinces contributed as encouraging as 63.51 percent of total import and export value of bilateral trade between China and countries along the Belt and Road, according to the China Top 500 Foreign Trade Enterprises Report released by China Economic Information Service and China Top 500 Foreign Trade Enterprises Club.
Analysts say the figure reveals China's Top 500 foreign trade enterprises have plays a significant role in furthering early-stage construction of the Belt and Road in China and related countries. The eye-catching result is largely attributable to Chinese foreign trade companies' transformation against the present sluggish foreign trade environment.
In the past, China's foreign trade is largely dominated by exporting resources, production factors, products and services, resulting in net outflow of resources and production factors over the long run. Under such circumstances, Chinese regulators came up with paying attention to pressing ahead with high-level two-way opening-up in last year's central economic work conference.
Two-way opening-up can be interpreted as "a heavily-loaded truck returning with the same heavy load", said Zhang Yansheng, secretary general of the Academic Committee of China's top economic planner - National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). In other words, Chinese foreign trade firms generally look to exchanging resources and production factors for China-needed resources and production factors. However, "a returning heavily-loaded truck" requires long-term efforts and cannot be realized easily.
Against such backdrop, the Belt and Road Initiative can function well. For instance, a 3-hour economic circle can at least be established to cover key ports, logistics centers and cities along the Belt and Road so as to enhance product circulation, logistics, capital flow, information flow, and talent flow and form a purchasing network for domestic foreign trade businesses.
To this end, Chinese foreign trade enterprises shall sharpen their global operating ability. As Zhang held, the Belt and Road Initiative is one of the engines in driving China to more deeply participate in the world economy and Chinese entrepreneurs shall better utilize the significant opportunity brought by the Initiative to grow into world leading enterprises.
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