Recently, Suzhou City released its main economic indicators from January to April 2026. This top student in domestic economic development has shown obvious bias.
Among the troika of investment, export and consumption, Suzhou Import and Export, a bloody horse, is roaring in the sky.
The total import and export volume in the first four months was 1.12 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31.8%, ranking first among the top 10 foreign trade cities in the country.
What’s even more frightening is that this rapid momentum is still accelerating. According to the latest official newsletter from the mayor investigating Suzhou Customs, from January to May, Suzhou’s total foreign trade import and export volume was 1.48 trillion yuan, an increase of 37.5% over the same period last year.
Looking at the import and export volume in May alone, it was 357.23 billion yuan, a growth rate of nearly 60%, the highest monthly growth rate since February 2010, and both exports and imports surged. The situation is great!
Compared with Shandong Province, the third largest province in terms of GDP in the country, the import and export growth rate from January to May was only 3.3%, with an absolute value of 147 million yuan.
With the power of one city, Suzhou’s foreign trade has surpassed that of Shandong Province for the first time in history.
A horizontal comparison of the province’s and the country’s status shows that Suzhou’s foreign trade accounts for 7.2% and 52.2% of the country and the province, exceeding half of Jiangsu’s.
Vertical comparison from January to May 2025, Suzhou’s total foreign trade import and export value was US$149.79 billion, a year-on-year increase of only 5.0%. This year’s results have indeed exploded.
To sum up, it seems that a score of 110 for this year’s foreign trade is not an exaggeration.
However, Suzhou Sheling is still taking one step slowly and stopping for three steps.
From January to April, the city’s total retail sales of consumer goods reached 299.37 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.5%.
Comparing the 13 prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu, only Suzhou, Wuxi and Taizhou experienced negative growth.
Similarly, comparing vertically from January to May 2025, the total retail sales of consumer goods in Suzhou was 385.272 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.2%.
To sum up, it seems that this year’s social retail spending is not unfair.
First of all, we must look at the contrast between the two rationally.
Good foreign trade does not mean that Suzhou’s economy is going to skyrocket. Poor consumption does not mean that Suzhou’s economy is in recession.
The proper meaning is to look at it comprehensively, rationally and objectively, not to belittle anything, not to badmouth, to focus on the structure, and to take a long-term view.
The good data on foreign trade is mainly due to the dividends brought by Suzhou’s catching up with the global AI wave.
Global cloud computing giants have increased their capital expenditures, resulting in huge demand for GPUs, data centers, and servers. Suzhou’s manufacturing industry is at the forefront of AI upstream. PCB, servers, semiconductor manufacturing and packaging, and light-related sub-industries such as optical fibers, optical cables, optical rods, optical modules, optical chips, and optical devices are the biggest beneficiaries, and the volume has naturally increased.
The home appliance foreign trade giants, led by Qingdao Hisense and Haier, have seen weak growth, leading to sluggish foreign trade data in Shandong.
With the increase in import and export volume, the profitability of Suzhou enterprises will naturally increase. However, the capital market will benefit the fastest, followed by enterprises. Of course, government taxes will also increase, and the income of employees will also increase.
But these increases will not be reflected immediately.
In addition, the AI industry is not all of us. There are also a large number of traditional industries supporting this society. The vast majority of people make a living from traditional industries and are not in this chain, so the feelings of this part of the audience are even less obvious.
The poor consumption data is more of a structural problem. Service consumption is good (cultural and tourism consumption is more prominent), and bag consumption has shrunk.
On the one hand, cultural tourism consumption has burst into new vitality. The Spring Break and Qingming Festival overlap to form a long holiday, which effectively releases the consumption potential of parent-child study, outings, leisure shopping and other industries, and drives the cultural tourism, accommodation, catering and other industries to achieve rapid growth.
On the other hand, bag shopping is shrinking, and optional consumer appliances, electronic products, and jewelry are declining. Such products with investment or show-off attributes are being avoided by rational consumers.
Real estate-related building materials and home decoration categories are also shrinking.
So it’s not that residents don’t consume anymore, it’s just that consumption has changed from buying physical goods to more buying experiences, which is a reshaping and switching of the consumption structure.
The seemingly huge contrast reflects the special industrial structure, explosive power and resilience of Suzhou’s economy, and of course also reflects the sluggish overall consumer demand.
However, from rational analysis, it is not difficult to conclude that Suzhou’s economy may not be as perfect as some people imagine, let alone as bad as some people imagine.
Jiangsu province’s social retail data from January to April only increased by less than 1%, so this negative growth is not very different. The shift from bulk consumer goods to service consumption may be a track switch after per capita GDP reaches a certain height.
