China's Foreign Trade

Over the past five decades, China's trade and economic relations with other countries and regions have undergone continuous development. As a result, the country's position in world trade has been greatly elevated, from the 32nd place in 1978 to the 10th in 1997. Since 1979, along with China's efforts in opening up to the outside world, it has actively developed its economic exchanges and cooperation with other countries and regions in line with the principle of equality and mutual benefit. Consequently, a multi-tiered, multi-channel and diversified management system has been established in China's foreign trade and economic relations, which comprises specialized foreign trade firms at various levels and of various kinds, productive enterprises that manage their own import and export, scientific research institutes, commercial and goods supply enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises. 
A framework of "broadly-based foreign economic relations and trade" has been set up initially. In this system, import and export trade, utilization of foreign capital, overseas investment, contracting of engineering projects overseas, cooperation in labor service and foreign aid mutually promote, and it involves the participation of foreign trade, production, scientific research and financial departments.
The basic industries and infrastructure projects have turned out to be the hot spots for foreign investment. The appeal held by the country's central and western parts for foreign investment has been enhanced. More and more world famous transnational corporations have come to invest in China. The number of large projects has been increasing and the average scale of foreign investment in single projects has been on a continuous rise.

Foreign contracts of engineering projects and labor service cooperation have undergone great development. At the earlier stage of the reform and opening-up drive, only a few enterprises were engaged in this field. But now, the number of such enterprises has exceeded 700 and they are of a complete range and possess a strong competitive edge on the world market. Their scope of business has been extended more and more into the hi-tech field, and the average scale of cooperative projects has become larger and larger.