China next month plans to launch a series of promotional activities, including a new consumer goods expo in southern Hainan Province, to boost spending as the Chinese retail sector recovers from consumer caution induced by COVID-19.
Expanding domestic consumption is a priority in China’s “dual circulation” economic strategy first highlighted by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in May last year, which also called for a reduced dependence on foreign markets.
China’s retail sales last month surged 34.2 percent year-on-year, surpassing a 28.0 percent gain expected by analysts and more than the 33.8 percent jump in January-to-February.
Photo: Ng Han Guan, AP
More significantly, retail revenues were 12.9 percent higher than March 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
As China enters a five-day Labor Day holiday, it plans to launch the month-long spending campaign in Shanghai on Saturday with activities including an auto show, Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng (高峰) told a news conference on Sunday.
Other major cities such as Beijing, Chongqing and Suzhou are also to hold sales in May, he added.
E-commerce platforms are to offer sales on food, travel, and cultural and sporting products by “good quality brands” for half a month.
Events planned in other cities include a food fair in Yangzhou city in eastern Jiangsu Province from Thursday and a fair from May 12 in Guangzhou in southern Guangdong Province that showcases well-known brands.
The city of Haikou on the subtropical island of Hainan — positioned by Beijing as a major Chinese consumption and tourism hub — is to hold an inaugural consumer goods expo from Friday next week to May 10.
Besides domestic products, the expo is to showcase consumer brands from 69 countries and regions including Japan, the UK and the US, with more than 10,000 merchandisers and more than 200,000 visitors anticipated.
Global brands such as Swatch Group AG, Shiseido Co, Dell Technologies Inc and Tesla Inc have confirmed their participation in the expo, Chinese state media has reported.
Separately, confidence among China’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) picked up for a second month in a survey of more than 500 companies by Standard Chartered PLC, with the rise in expectations pointing to an even better performance this quarter than in the first three months of the year.
“Export-oriented SMEs continued to outperform domestically focused SMEs, with faster production and higher output price gains,” Standard Chartered economists Shen Lan (沈蘭) and Ding Shuang (丁爽) wrote in a report. “The services sector is catching up at a faster pace, driven by the transport and logistics, [information technology] and commercial services industries, while the catering and accommodation sectors remain sluggish.”
The improvement in services was due to the “removal of restrictive measures and [COVID-19] vaccine rollout. While export demand stayed resilient, domestic demand also started to pick up,” they said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
MARKET SHIFTS: Exports to the US soared more than 120 percent to almost one quarter, while ASEAN has steadily increased to 18.5 percent on rising tech sales The proportion of Taiwan’s exports directed to China, including Hong Kong, declined by more than 12 percentage points last year compared with its peak in 2020, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday last week. The decrease reflects the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains, driven by escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington. Data compiled by the ministry showed China and Hong Kong accounted for 31.7 percent of Taiwan’s total outbound sales last year, a drop of 12.2 percentage points from a high of 43.9 percent in 2020. In addition to increasing trade conflicts between China and the US, the ministry said
RSS