Foreign and privately-owned firms are playing a bigger role in China's foreign trade, which is shifting from light industrial products to high technologies, new research shows.

Chai Haitao, head of the research institute in the Department of Foreign Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, said, "The changes show China is playing a major role in the restructuring of global industry chain as well as the transfer of manufacturing."

Since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, product profile has undergone a great change, said Chai at the ongoing Summit Forum of China's Top 200 Exporters-Importers.

"Both imports and exports of high and new technology products, mainly in the IT industry, are growing rapidly with the export value amounting to 30 percent of the country's total exports in 2005," Chai said.

Export and import products had been upgraded rapidly with exports of traditional technology products, such as small-screen colour televisions, VCD players, clocks and watches, shrinking dramatically by more than 30 percent in the recent two years, while exports of high-tech products, such as laptop computers, mobile phones, and liquid crystal display items, are rising by up to 260 percent.

China's foreign trade growth was mainly driven by light industrial products and textiles in the 1980s and by traditional electromechanical products in the 1990s.

Trading forms were changing with processing trade volume growing rapidly to 50 percent of the total trade volume in 2005.

Official figures show the country's processing trade increased to US$404.8 billion in 2003, 47.6 percent of the total trade volume, from US$2.5 billion in 1981, just 5.7 percent of the total.

Chai said foreign and privately-owned companies were playing a more important role in China's foreign trade with the former accounting for 58 percent of the total trade volume and the latter 21 percent.

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