China aims to revive exports despite grim global markets

China's policy makers are ratcheting up their policy support to revive Chinese exports. This despite the fact that the World Trade Organization slashed its 2012 global trade outlook last week due to the still unresolved Eurozone debt crisis.

As the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is drawing nearer, our reporter Yin Hang takes a look at how the world's second largest economy can keep its foreign trade momentum over the next decades.

11 years after entering the WTO, China is now the biggest exporter in the world, offering products worth more than 900 billion US dollars worldwide each year. And an average of 750 billion US dollars worth of imports every year is equal to the creation of over 18 million jobs in countries trading with China.

China's foreign trade volume has climbed from the sixth to the second place in recent few years.Despite its export, market demand, hit by the European debt crisis, its import is growing, and the foreign trade structure is becoming more balanced than ever.

With the eurozone debt crisis biting into demand, figures show that China's trade surplus widened to 26.7 billion US dollars in August as imports registered a surprise fall of 2.6 percent year-on-yaer.

China's central government has introduced several measures to bring more stability in its exports. Among other changes, it requires faster payments of rebates on export taxes and asks for more money to be lent to exporting firms to open up financing channels.

China's foreign trade industry has also prepared to fight the uphill battle, by changing its previous growth model.

Yu Rumin, chairman of Tianjin Port group, says, "In the process of developing our international logistics chain, we have upgraded our services. And we have changed our growth structure, making our profit growth rely not only on shipments, but also on the non-shipping business."

And the WTO believes China's huge weight in the world economy will increase further from here.

Pascal Lamy, Director General of WTO, says, "China's investment will be much bigger and much more important."

China has already taken steps this year to stimulate growth by cutting interest rates twice in less than 30 days and slashing the amount of funds banks must keep in reserves in a bid to stimulate lending also for exporting companies.