Instruments and meters belong to high-tech industry, instruments and meters products are widely used in various fields of economy and society, whether it is control devices, optical instruments, or measuring instruments, analytical instruments, the accuracy of the control and the precision of the analysis and measurement are required to be very high.

    Since the second half of 2013, the export of our country's instrument and instrument products tends to be stable. Due to the limited market scale of the instrument industry, it is expected that the export growth will remain stable Import growth will remain below export growth, at 3 per cent and 5 per cent, with imports worth about $44bn.

    According to customs statistics, in 2013 our country exported a total of US $25.37 billion in instruments and meters, up 6.2 percent year on year, and imported US $42.29 billion, up 3.8 percent year on year.

   Since 2001, the import and export of instrument products in our country has maintained a rapid and steady growth, only in 2009 by the impact of the international financial crisis has declined, after a rapid and brief recovery in 2010 and 2011, the last two years have been marked by a gradual downturn.

    Since 2001, the trade deficit of instrument and instrument products in our country has been continuously expanding, and before 2006, the deficit has exceeded the export amount. But since 2005, the growth rate of exports began to exceed the growth rate of imports, the growth rate of the trade deficit gradually narrowed, the deficit is also more than exports. The trade deficit peaked at $17.16 billion in 2011 and has since fallen.

    On the export side, after a short period of growth at the beginning of the year, the overall performance in the first half of the year was sluggish, while the growth rate in the second half remained stable. On the import side, the monthly growth rate fluctuated considerably. In the whole year, the import and export increased slightly, and the export growth continued to outpace the import growth.

    There are 12 main types of instrument products. For Export, industrial automatic control systems and devices, optical instruments and medical instruments are the most important product categories, the export growth rate of industrial automatic control systems and devices (18.1%) , electrical instruments (11.1%) , experimental analysis instruments (14.6%) and weighing instruments (10.2%) . Only the exports of measuring instruments and meters fell year on year.

    Industrial automatic control systems and devices, experimental and analytical instruments, medical instruments, optical instruments, electronic measuring instruments are the main categories of imported products, the import of optical instruments (20.9%) , experimental analytical instruments (15.8%) and medical instruments (7.1%) increased rapidly, while the import of other product categories decreased in varying degrees.

    Our country's instrument products are in surplus only in the import and export trade of low-tech measuring instruments, weighing instruments, drawing and calculating instruments and measuring instruments, while the other types of products are in trade deficit, among them, the trade deficit of industrial automatic control system and equipment, electronic measuring instrument and medical instrument is the most.

    Asia is the main export market of our instrument products, accounting for more than half, followed by Europe and North America (mainly the United States) , the export share of the same 19% , export growth to the three major markets is also more than the average export growth. In addition, the decline in exports to Africa, Latin and Oceania was particularly marked in Africa.

    The United States is our largest import and export market for instrumentation products, exporting $4.64 billion to it in 2013, accounting for 18.3 percent, up 8.3 percent year-on-year, and importing $8.8 billion from the United States, accounting for 20.8 percent, up 9.2 percent year-on-year. Among the top 10 export markets, only exports to Japan have declined. The countries and regions with faster export growth are Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, the Netherlands and India, the growth rates were 36.2% , 15.7% , 15.5% , 11.7% and 10.5% respectively.

    Our imports of instruments and meters from Asia accounted for 45.7 percent, from Europe for 32 percent and from North for 21.5 percent, but the growth rate of imports from these regions was small, especially from Asia, which increased only 0.7 percent year-on-year. The faster growth in imports was mainly in Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, mainly due to the smaller import base from these regions and more volatile growth.

    In addition to the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea and Taiwan Province were the main importing countries and regions, but imports from Taiwan and South Korea alone grew faster, at 14.9 percent and 12.1 percent, respectively, imports from Germany and Japan rose 3.7 percent and fell 8.7 percent, respectively.

    Our country through the general trade export instrument products accounted for the largest, 44.8% , the growth rate of 9.5% ; through the processing trade export accounted for 44.4% , the growth rate of 3.6% ; processing trade is mainly to import processing, accounting for 41% , 5.1 percent growth.