China's private enterprises are now playing more important roles in national imports and exports, especially after the Ministry of Commerce lowered the threshold of foreign trade rights as of September 1.

Custom statistics show that trade volume of private enterprise reached US$28.02 billion in the first 7 months, up 170 percent over the same period last year and far higher than the national average, 37.9 percent.

Export and import volume hit US$15.87 billion and US$12.15 billion respectively, 1.6 and 1.8 times higher than that of last year. In Guangdong Province whose foreign trade accounts for one-third of the nation's total, the trade volume of the private sector reached US$10.74 billion, about 7.2 percent of the province's total. In the Yangtze River Delta which is composed of Shanghai Municipality, Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province, the export of private companies is booming in recent years due to vigorous private sectors. In southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the export volume of the private sector was 6 times higher than the same period last year, and exceeded that of foreign-invested companies.

Private exporters are mainly from the textile, food, light industry, chemical, building materials, machinery, computer and software sectors. Some of them are big exporters, to take Guangdong Province for example, there were eight private enterprises whose export volume in the first seven months exceeded US$100 million.

(China.org.cn by Tang Fuchun, September 5, 2003)