China Import Food Summit and the Annual Report Press Conference Held in Shanghai

On the afternoon of November 7, the first China import Food Summit and the 2018 Annual Report Press Conference were held in Shanghai. Assistant Minister of Commerce Ren Hongbin attended the summit and delivered a speech.

Ren Hongbin pointed out that in the past two decades from 1997 to 2017, the average compound annual growth rate of China's imported food was 14.6%. In 2017, China imported 66.1 billion US dollars of food, up 11%. Every year, China imports a large number of dairy products, aquatic products, meat products, fruit and nuts from more than 180 countries and regions, not only satisfying the diversified and personalized consuming demand of people, but also bringing rich returns to agricultural exporters.

Ren Hongbin said that the Chinese government unswervingly implements the fundamental policy of opening up and the active import policy. Since the beginning of this year, the Chinese government has launched four new measures to independently reduce tariffs and adopted a series of measures on fiscal taxation, financial policy and trade facilitation. We increase the imports of food and agricultural products, encourage the imports of resource commodities, support the imports of key components of advanced technology and the imports of services of important fields, expand the imports of duty-free goods, strengthen the imports of public goods that improve people's livelihood, and hold the first China International import Expo. These policy measures will open up a broad prospect for foreign products including food to expand the Chinese market.

Ren Hongbin emphasized that openness and cooperation are important driving forces to enhance the vitality of international economy and trade. The growth of China's trade in agricultural products is attributed to the continuous development of China's economy and the deepening of China's opening up. China will always adhere to this policy, advocate using each country’s strength to make up the other country’s weakness, mutual benefits and win-win results of all countries and drive the stable growth of the world economy by implementing a series of measures to actively expand imports.

The summit was hosted by China Chamber of Commerce for import and Export of Foodstuffs and Native Produce. Attending were more than 300 representatives from the Ministry of Commerce, the General Administration of Customs, the Shanghai Municipal People's Government, relevant government departments at home and abroad, food industry organizations and enterprises.