China will support its exporters to participate in various business exhibitions abroad and closely cooperate with trading partners to put its foreign trade growth on a firmer footing in 2023, government officials said on Thursday.

Against external headwinds including cooling prospects for overseas demand and lingering geopolitical conflicts, these activities will create more opportunities for China’s export-oriented companies, and a series of offline domestic trade fairs, like the China Import and Export Fair, or Canton Fair, in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, will be fully resumed this year, they said.

Addressing a news conference in Beijing, Li Xingqian, director-general of the department of foreign trade at the Ministry of Commerce, said the government will support the innovation of new foreign trade formats like cross-border e-commerce and overseas warehouses, to reinforce the competitiveness of the country’s foreign trade.

China’s goods trade surged 7.7 percent year-on-year to a record 42.07 trillion yuan in 2022, making the country the world’s largest trader in goods for the sixth successive year, said the General Administration of Customs.

After years of upgrading and growth, Li said that high-tech, high value-added and green transformation-related products have become new growth engines for Chinese exports.

With the pact coming into force on Jan 1, 2022, the RCEP comprises 15 Asia-Pacific countries, namely 10 member economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and five other trading partners — China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.