Europe remains tough export market(2)

Trade: EU loses top spot as biggest market for Chinese exports

According to the General Administration of Customs, China's exports to the European Union fell 0.8 percent in the first half of 2012 to $163.1 billion, while the country's overall exports grew 9.2 percent to $954.4 billion.

In the meantime, the United States surpassed the EU to become the largest market for Chinese exports, for the first time since 2006.

Chinese exports to the EU accounted for 17.1 percent of the nation's total exports during the first half, down from 20 percent in 2010. Neither corporate executives nor researchers are sanguine about the outlook for the second half.

"The situation remains very severe considering the possibility of a double-dip recession in eurozone economies in the coming months," said Yao Ling, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, affiliated with the Ministry of Commerce.

"We cannot exclude the possibility that China's exports to the EU will grow in the second half, but this will be very hard to achieve," said Yao.

Zhang Guojian, vice-executive secretary of Guangdong Chamber of Commerce for Imports and Exports of Private Enterprises, agreed.

"We cannot see any signs of recovery for China's shipments to the region in the short term, as the EU market will continue to be slack, probably into the first quarter of next year," Zhang said.

"The European market is so weak that we have had to take all sorts of measures to cut costs since the first quarter of this year," said Zhang Guanjin, manager of Shaoxing Jinyong Textile Co Ltd in Zhejiang province.

"Many textile exporters in Zhejiang are challenged by high costs, and orders have also been declining, as some European clients transfer their orders to Southeast Asia to take advantage of lower labor costs," he said.

Shaoxing Jinyong shifted its focus toward the domestic market two years ago, and 50 percent of its sales now come from the domestic market.

Early this year in his annual Government Work Report, Premier Wen Jiabao set a target of 10 percent for the nation's foreign trade growth this year.

Customs officials said recently that, due to the shrinking global demand and increasing costs, the fundamentals for the recovery of the nation's foreign trade are "not stable".

Gao Hucheng, vice-minister of commerce, said last week that the pressures on the Chinese government to achieve the 10 percent target are "growing", amid the worsening eurozone debt crisis.

Yao predicted that the growth of China-EU trade would be "far below" the national level of 10 percent, dragging down Chinese exports, despite the fairly healthy growth in Chinese imports from the bloc.

The outlook for the eurozone economy remains troubled. The debt woes which started in Greece have spread to other European nations, including Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

Spanish unemployment in the second quarter hit its highest level of 24.6 percent since the mid-1970s, and the number of unemployed Spaniards reached 5.7 million, giving the country the highest proportion of people out of work in the EU.

Moody's Investors Service recently changed its outlook for Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg from stable to negative, which has dampened economists' confidence in the eurozone and added to uncertainty over its prospects for recovery.

On top of the decreasing demand, trade investigations by European nations are adding to Chinese exporters' woes.

In March, the European Commission said it was considering imposing duties on made-in-China products to offset alleged subsidies, because it believed that European companies are hesitant about asking the EU to take protective measures for fear that China will retaliate against their business interests. But the move, if taken, would violate World Trade Organization rules, said trade experts.

And the investigations have spread from low-end manufacturing to high-end categories.

In May, reports said the European Commission was preparing an investigation into Chinese telecom equipment companies including Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp.

After the US announced its preliminary anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on Chinese solar panels, European solar panel manufacturers were reportedly preparing to launch an anti-dumping complaint against their Chinese counterparts.

"Sales to Europe were bad during the first half, and orders decreased by big margins," said Zhao Chunyang, general manager of Miracle Dynasty Fine Bone China (Shanghai) Co Ltd.

But the situation will worsen in the second half, and many industrial players will "probably have no orders from the EU market", as the EU is likely to announce anti-dumping duties against Chinese ceramic products in October, he added.

For manufacturers like Miracle, whose major clients are in the EU, change is the only way ahead.

"We are turning toward promoting goods in emerging markets, and boosting spending on research and development," said Zhao.

As Europe faces tough economic conditions, Beijing has expressed concern that Brussels may take protectionist measures against Chinese companies to expand its exports.

"Within the European Union, it is not just up to one government to make this decision, it is a quite complicated process to approve such trade measures," said Jonathan Holslag, a researcher at Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies.

Holslag said eurozone countries need to reduce the trade imbalance by expanding exports and creating jobs. He warned that if the crisis lasts longer than expected, Brussels may resort to more protectionist trade policies.

"But at this stage, trade tensions between Beijing and Brussels remain at a manageable level," Holslag said.