Dawn of China's foreign trade recovery

Also, the processing industry used to account for more than half of the total trade volume, but now the proportion has dropped to 42 percent.

Five years ago, China put forward a development strategy for restructuring the economy, aiming to shift its economy from one dependent on exports to one driven by consumption.

Yao Jian, spokesman of the MOFCOM, said the most prominent change to China's foreign trade in 2012 was that general trade grew more rapidly than the processing industry, which indicates that China is relying less on processing fees.

The MOFCOM figures show that in the first three quarters, China's general trade grew by 5.9 percent over a year ago. Of the total, exports rose by 8.3 percent and imports by 3.6 percent, which were respectively 5.3 percentage points and 2.6 percentage points higher than those of the processing industry.

Another point of interest is that while exports to traditional destinations decline, China's exports to emerging markets are growing rapidly. For example, exports to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Russia increased by 16.6 percent and 14.5 percent respectively.

Third, exports of independent brands account for a larger proportion. Among all exporting enterprises, 20 percent have independent brands.

Yao said in the future, China will face greater pressure to shift its economy because costs have risen rapidly in recent years, weakening the competitiveness of China's manufacturing industries to some extent.

From 2008 to 2011, the per capita annual salary for urban manufacturing employees grew at an average annual rate of 14.5 percent and that of migrant workers in manufacturing industries grew by 15 percent. As industrialization in neighboring countries accelerates, some enterprises are shifting operations elsewhere.

In the first seven months of this year, the market share of China's seven categories of traditional labor-intensive products exported to the United States, Europe and Japan declined by 2.1 percentage points, 1.4 percentage points and 2.7 percentage points respectively. Most of the lost shares were squeezed by China's neighboring low-cost countries.

"When external demand declines, China's labor-intensive products are facing growing international competition," said Yao. "Therefore export-oriented enterprises should shift to high-end manufacturing and focus on enhancing product quality."