This year, the global economic situation has been chaotic, and economic data is becoming increasingly difficult to understand.
Recently, there is a data that needs to be particularly vigilant. Is there a major problem with the world economy? Or is there a major problem with the Chinese economy? Or is there a major problem with the US economy?
Someone has said that you are singing about the global economic recession and the US economic recession every day. If there is a major problem with the global economy, can we stand alone? If the US economy doesn't work out, can we get better?
This is true, but we cannot hide our ears and steal the truth. Instead, we must face reality and find the root cause of the problem in order to solve it. Moreover, such emotional words cannot explain many questions, let alone answer many major questions.
It is very important this year that export data is still declining. At the beginning of the year, many experts could provide clear explanations, such as the economic recession in developed countries in Europe and America, coupled with high inflation, and a significant contraction in demand; For example, the impact of decoupling and chain breaking is becoming increasingly evident, and the United States is vigorously engaging in offshore outsourcing in Mexico and Canada.
These can all be explained, but seeing the export data for September, some issues are no longer explained, and the world economy is becoming more complex.
In September of this year, China's exports to the European Union, the United States, Japan, and South Korea simultaneously showed negative growth, which seems normal. This year's figures have always been like this. Some people say that their economy is not working, inflation is working, and purchasing power is not working, which is also true.
Another factor, in fact, our exports increased significantly from 2020 to 2022. Due to the stagnation of production in the West due to the pandemic, we are relatively better off. Moreover, due to the pandemic, the West's large-scale flooding has led to a brief increase in purchasing power. Therefore, the current decline in exports can also be understood as paying for the previous surge, and now it is returning to a normal state.
Let's take a look at the data. From January to September this year, China's total import and export value was 30.8 trillion yuan, a slight decrease of 0.2% year-on-year. This year's situation is acceptable.
In the first three quarters, ASEAN, the European Union, the United States, Japan, and South Korea were China's top five trading partners, and ASEAN was the only region with positive growth, accounting for 15.2% of our total import and export value.
However, what is particularly alarming is why our export data to ASEAN suddenly showed a significant decline?
As we all know, the importance of our trade with ASEAN is not only reflected on the surface of data, but more importantly, it contains a large number of processing industries and transit trade. At the same time, ASEAN is also the largest overseas manufacturing base for Chinese brands and one of the important windows for our manufacturing industry to face the world.
So, our trade with ASEAN is actually a spillover effect of Chinese manufacturing, which is very important.
That's how important ASEAN is. From January to September this year, the total trade value between China and ASEAN was 4.68 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.8%, including exports of 2.71 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.4%. This data indicates that ASEAN is also somewhat stagnant.
More importantly, since the second half of the year, exports to ASEAN have experienced a chill, with a year-on-year decrease of 21.4% in US dollars in July, 13.3% in August, and 15.8% in September.
What's the problem with the sudden and continuous decline?
We need to look at the trade structure between China and the world, which has many alarming aspects.
Let's take a look again. Compared with Europe, America, and ASEAN, China's imports and exports to emerging markets such as Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America increased by 33.7%, 6.7%, and 5.1% respectively in the first three quarters; The import and export of countries jointly building the "the Belt and Road" increased by 3.1% year on year, accounting for 46.5% of China's total foreign trade.
What is the the Belt and Road? Let's take a different perspective and understand that in fact, our outward investment is driving trade. Many co construction projects themselves are trade, and the demand that drives some growth constitutes a strong growth in this part of trade.
In other words, a few years ago we invested heavily domestically to drive economic growth, but now we have expanded this approach overseas, and the underlying logic is the same.
So, we can understand that in the field of conventional trade, not only are we declining, but the world's conventional trade is also declining. Only the part driven by our external investment is still growing strongly.
This reveals an important truth about the world economy today.
The truth is that anti globalization and trade barriers, as well as the turbulent political situation, coupled with the US dollar interest rate hike and global monetary tightening, are harming global trade and economic development.
So, first of all, there are problems with the world economy, especially global economic recession and inflation that have suppressed demand.
This conclusion doesn't seem particularly significant, as everyone has repeatedly discussed it, but the trend is clearer to see. So we will see the world's unprecedented upheaval more clearly: the Western developed countries led by the United States have shifted from prosperity to decline, and they have shifted from bringing incremental benefits to the world economy to becoming a drag.
At the same time, the United States is very unwilling to lose its hegemonic position and is desperately struggling to tear apart the favorable situation of the global economy.
Can these data prove that the problem we are worried about has finally occurred, and that the world economy is not only experiencing problems, but is also splitting with political divisions?