Crisis, protectionism slowing foreign trade

Edited and translated by People's Daily Online

Sun Yibiao, deputy director of China's General Administration of Customs, responded to concerns about a recent slowdown in the country's foreign trade growth, saying they are in part due to a resurgence of protectionism that has emerged amid the global financial crisis.

Sun explained that the economic slowdown in the past months actually marked economic growth compared to last year because China's economy entered a recovery period at that time. China's foreign trade volume dropped sharply in 2009 due to the global financial crisis, providing a low comparison base for trade growth last year.

A slowdown in the foreign trade growth this year is thus reasonable due to the relatively high comparison base from last year. China's foreign trade volume for the first 10 months of this year had already exceeded last year's total volume and posted a pretty high year-on-year growth rate of 24 percent, much higher than the country's GDP growth rate during the same period and also higher than the average annual foreign trade growth rate of nearly 16 percent during the 11th Five-Year-Plan period.