What Did Two Lectures on International Trade Tell Us?

The year of 2020 sees some changes in international trade, especially while being influenced by COVID-19. At the very beginning, the epidemic stopped our manufacturing and production. Take our company as an example. During the epidemic, workers didn’t work and no machine was manufactured. Many indents had to be postponed. Even when there were machines, shipment became another problem, regardless of by sea or by air. Higher freight, blockade of a few countries and sometimes virus spreading on board during shipment and so on, all of these factors played a negative role in international trade.

What challenges did international trade companies face? How were they be influenced by the epidemic? How can the international trade recover soon after the epidemic or before its second spreading? All of these questions are extremely urgent. Without answering them, international trade for us might still be a mess.

There have been two lectures held in the past week by the government and relative trading offices. On the lecture, many experts introduced the latest situation and gave us reliable suggestions correspondingly. For example, when it came to high cost of shipment by sea or by air, one expert introduced us China Railway Express.

China Railway Express is actually a railway express network, connecting China with countries in Europe or the other members of “the Belt and Road Initiatives”. China Railway Express had its first train departed on Mar. 19th, 2013 from Chongqing, China to Duisburg, Germany. After 7-year development, China Railway Express (Zhengzhou) have 14 trains departed and 10 trains arrived weekly from 1 train departed monthly initially. The express with other cities as departure station also developed rapidly. Besides, railway express has its own advantages, compared with sea shipment. Yiwu-Madrid line, about 13052km, is the longest among all China Railway Express lines, but trains can arrive in Madrid in about 20 days, via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France and Spain. However, the shipment by sea will cost about 30 days. And the arrive date might even be delayed when shipment is influenced by some natural factors such as typhoon or other majeures.

Except China Railway Express, application of the single window was also introduced. With application of the single window, we can simplify our procedures while dealing with matters on customs in a higher speed. Also, the single window enables convenient verification of documents, such as Certificate of Origin.

Besides, more and more trading policies are released in China to help us foreign traders communicate and connect with overseas customers effectively and firmly. For instance, another three new Pilot Free Trade Zones are to be set in Hunan, Beijing and Anhui. Then the trade with other countries can be furthermore strengthened.

In addition, we are also trying our best to update and upgrade our machines. Benefiting from state support and friendly international trading environment, we can provide better machines for all of our customers.