China says foreign trade faces 'extremely severe' situation, blames geopolitics for slump

BEIJING — China's Commerce Ministry connected Wednesday said non-economic factors were increasing and interfering with the country's overseas commercialized which was facing an "extremely severe" concern successful the 2nd fractional of this year.

"Some countries' forceful propulsion for 'decoupling,' 'severing [supply] chains' and alleged 'de-risking' are human-made obstacles blocking mean commerce," Li Xingqian, the caput of the ministry's outer commercialized department, said successful Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation. He was speaking to reporters astatine a property league astir the ministry's enactment successful the archetypal fractional of the year.

China's exports, a important contributor to home growth, person plunged successful caller months arsenic planetary maturation has slowed.

On Wednesday, Li noted the wide slowdown. He besides said that since commercialized had risen during the 3 years of the Covid-19 pandemic, that had acceptable a precocious basal for this year's figures.

Li besides straight referenced calls for proviso concatenation diversification.

"Companies accidental immoderate countries' politicization of commercialized has forced orders and accumulation to determination out, damaging the economical interests of some suppliers and buyers," helium said. He added the ministry would assistance businesses to header with "unreasonable commercialized restrictions."

The ministry did not accidental thing astir its ain precocious announced export controls, acceptable to instrumentality effect Aug. 1 connected 2 cardinal metals.

The U.S. is utilizing export controls of its ain successful an effort to bounds China's improvement of high-end tech. Trade tensions betwixt the U.S. and China person escalated implicit the past fewer years, prompting different countries to instrumentality enactment arsenic well.

China, meanwhile, is looking to clasp and pull overseas investment. Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk and galore different concern leaders person traveled to China since it relaxed its borderline restrictions this year.

The Commerce Ministry said Wednesday that its minister, Wang Wentao, has met with much than 20 visiting executives of overseas companies this year. The ministry reiterated its efforts to found regular roundtables with overseas businesses successful China and code operational challenges.

Among different plans, the ministry said it would marque changes to let overseas investors to summation the size of their strategical investments successful listed companies.