CRI听力:China's foreign trade continues to improve in first 11 months

The newly released data by the Chinese customs showed that China's imports and exports dropped 1.2 percent year-on-year to 21.8 trillion yuan, or about 3 trillion U.S. dollars in the first 11 months.

Shen Danyang, spokesman of China's Ministry of Commerce, said the slew of data show China's monthly import and export achieved positive growth and the structure of foreign trade was further optimized.

"The decline in export narrowed for two consecutive quarters since March, and export reached a new high for this year. China's import grew for four consecutive months since August and the 13 percent gain in November was the biggest monthly import growth in three years,"

At the Friday's routine news briefing, Shen also said that private enterprises were still the major contributors to export.

Latest data shows private enterprises contributed 46 percent to the total shipments of Chinese exports over the past 11 months, with emerging industries such as cross-border e-commerce and foreign trade services continuing their faster pace of growth.

Liu Qing, professor at University of International Business and Economics, says China's economic vitality is largely derived from the private sector.

"Chinese private brands are becoming increasingly competitive. This is the outward manifestation of the rising competitiveness of private enterprises. The private sector has played a major role in Chinese exports. China's economic vitality is largely from the private sector."

Professor Liu also noted the progression of China's One Belt, One Road initiative, it is also injecting impetus into the country's foreign trade.

"Currently, the Belt and Road initiative is largely about infrastructure building, which will directly create demand for equipment and engineering machinery made in China. In addition to this direct impact, there will be more long-term effects, for example if we make inroads to other markets, costs of transportation and trade will decrease, which will bring benefits to Chinese exports."

Analyst predict that positive readings for China's foreign trade are likely to continue.

Zhu Qibing, an analyst with BOC International, says trade data will continue to improve, as the global economy does better next year.

But downward pressure for trade growth still remains for the coming year, due to a variety of uncertainties including possible changes to trade policy by the U.S. government.

For CRI, I'm Min Rui.