Overcoming difficulties surrounding pandemic, Vietnam - China trade has recovered when it officially exceeded 95 billion USD in the first half of 2024, approaching 100 billion USD. Chinese market continues to affirm itself as the largest market for Vietnamese goods in both export and import directions.
Notably, in the first half of the year, China continued to be Vietnam's largest import market with an estimated turnover of 67 billion USD, up 34.7% over the same period last year and accounting for nearly 37.6% of the country's total import turnover. Of which, Vietnam's export of goods to the billion-people market reached 27.8 billion USD, up 5.3% over the same period.
However, on the other hand, Vietnam also spent a large amount of foreign currency to buy goods from this market. Import turnover from China in the first half of the year is estimated at 67 billion USD, up 34.7%. Thus, each month, amount of imported goods from China is up to more than 11.6 billion USD. In the first half of this year, Vietnam's trade deficit with China reached 39.2 billion USD, up 67.9%, equivalent to an increase of 14.7 billion USD.
High import figure makes trade deficit in the first half of this year almost equal to trade deficit of the whole of last year (Vietnam's trade deficit with China in 2023 reached 49.4 billion USD, down 18.4% compared to 2022).
However, in terms of industry structure, major groups of imported goods from China in recent times have all been goods serving production and export.
For example, in 2023, computer products, electronic products and components reached 23.4 billion USD, machinery, equipment, tools, other spare parts 22.5 billion USD, fabrics reached 8.3 billion USD, phones and components reached 7.3 billion USD, iron and steel 5.7 billion USD, plastic products 4 billion USD, iron and steel products reached 3.4 billion USD, chemical products 3.4 billion USD, textile, garment, leather and footwear raw materials reached 3.1 billion USD, chemicals 2.9 billion USD, electric wires and cables (reached 1.5 billion USD, up 1.7%); textile fibers and yarns (reached 1.3 billion USD, down 11.9%); glass and glass products (reaching 1.1 billion USD, up 8.4%).
In the first half of this year, structure of imported goods from China is still the same group of goods. Thus, it can be seen that structure of imported goods from China is mainly raw materials for production.
In the first half of this year, according to Ministry of Industry and Trade, Vietnam's export orders for many industries are recovering strongly. Typically, export of computers, electronic products and components is estimated at 5.7 billion USD, up 11% over the same period, import of phones and components is about 5.9 billion USD, cameras, camcorders and components is estimated at 2.8 billion USD, vegetables and fruits are more than 2.3 billion USD, up 33%... This result is largely due to source of raw materials for production imported from China.
In addition, Vietnam and China currently have many bilateral cooperation agreements, as well as multilateral trade agreements such as the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA), the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP). This makes imported goods from China to Vietnam competitive in price with goods from other markets. In addition to advantage of a favorable geographical location, this is an opportunity for goods from China to have opportunity to be imported into Vietnamese market with increasingly high turnover.
Currently, China is promoting its accession to Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)... This is a good opportunity for Vietnamese goods to penetrate deeper into this most potential market in the world. It is also an opportunity to increase imports of goods from billion-people market to benefit from mechanism of origin of goods within the CPTPP bloc.
It is forecasted that in the last 6 months of 2024, Vietnam's trade activities with billion-people market will continue to improve, thanks to increased demand for goods at the end of the year. Import rate of raw materials will maintain a stronger growth rate than exports to serve export orders to many signed markets.

Source: Vitic/ congthuong.vn