According to Shenzhen Customs, in the first two months of this year, ASEAN surpassed Hong Kong to become Shenzhen’s largest trading partner, with imports and exports of 106.92 billion yuan, an increase of 58.1%, accounting for 15.8% of Shenzhen’s total imports and exports in the same period.

In the first two months of this year, ASEAN remained China’s largest trading partner. The total trade value between China and ASEAN was 993.24 billion yuan, up by 8.1%, accounting for 15% of China’s foreign trade. China and ASEAN have been each other’s largest trading partner for four consecutive years.

During the same period, Shenzhen’s import and export to and from the top ten trading partners maintained growth, accounting for 73.9% of the total import and export. Shenzhen’s second to fifth trading partners are Hong Kong, the United States, the European Union and Taiwan, with year-on-year import and export growth of 12.5%, 62.4%, 20.9% and 13.5% respectively.

With the accelerated restructuring of the global industrial chain and the effective implementation of RCEP, the momentum of Shenzhen’s openness and cooperation with ASEAN has been further enhanced.

Shenzhen and ASEAN give full play to their respective comparative advantages, strengthen infrastructure connectivity, enhance the level of investment and trade facilitation, deepen the integration and development of the industrial chain supply chain, and the continued expansion of the scale of trade in intermediate goods, which has become an important factor driving the growth of Shenzhen’s foreign trade.

In addition, one of the reasons for the faster growth of Shenzhen’s import and export to ASEAN is that some European and American brands have set up their factories in ASEAN countries, and the intermediate goods and raw materials still need to be purchased from China, so some Chinese SMEs are now also going to ASEAN to take orders.

In the first two months of this year, Shenzhen import and export 675.18 billion yuan, up 45% year-on-year, the scale of the same period in history, the import and export growth rate of the country’s top ten foreign trade cities first. Among them, exports 441.44 billion yuan, an increase of 53.1%; imports 233.74 billion yuan, an increase of 31.9%.