The reporter learned from the series of themed press conferences on promoting high-quality development held by the State Council Information Office on July 30th that since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the national customs have strictly guarded the security of the country's borders, providing strong guarantees for achieving high-quality development, and China's foreign trade has achieved leapfrog growth.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China's foreign trade has grown at an average annual rate of nearly 1.6 trillion yuan. The total value of foreign trade imports and exports in 2023 has increased by 17 trillion yuan compared to 2012, ranking high in the 2023 World Trade Rankings; During the same period, the volume of goods under customs supervision also increased significantly by 54.5%.
China's total trade volume of goods has ranked first in the world for seven consecutive years, and has become a major trading partner for more than 150 countries and regions. The number of foreign trade enterprises has nearly doubled compared to 2012. The export of high-tech, high value-added, and green products such as automobiles, integrated circuits, and lithium batteries will increase by 7.3 times, 1.8 times, and 15.2 times respectively in 2023 compared to 2012. In the first half of this year, China's foreign trade exceeded 21 trillion yuan for the first time, reaching a new high in scale. China's foreign trade has achieved leapfrog growth and entered a new era. The "foreign trade cake" has become even larger, and the value of high-quality development has also increased.
In recent years, the customs have successively issued 9 sets of 209 measures to help enterprises relieve difficulties and promote stable growth of foreign trade, and 12 sets of 227 policy measures to support regional coordinated development.
The customs, together with relevant departments and local governments, have launched a special action to promote cross-border trade facilitation for seven consecutive years, focusing on building a high-level platform for opening up to the outside world, and vigorously supporting the construction of new highlands for opening up to the outside world such as Hainan Free Trade Port, Hengqin Guangdong Macao Deep Cooperation Zone, and Shanghai Oriental Hub International Business Cooperation Zone.
In the first half of this year, customs across the country strengthened port supervision, strengthened comprehensive tax management, maintained a high-pressure situation in cracking down on smuggling, supervised 2.73 billion tons of imported and exported goods, collected 105 trillion yuan in taxes, and filed and investigated nearly 3000 cases of illegal smuggling crimes with a total value of over 54 billion yuan. National customs have detected 29000 cases of various infectious diseases and over 30000 batches of substandard food and other goods. Strictly prevent the invasion of alien species and intercept 37000 species of quarantine pests.