Since the beginning of 2026, my country’s import and export scale has increased steadily, becoming an important support for stabilizing the macroeconomic market.
Currently, with the support of favorable factors such as high-tech and high value-added products, knowledge-intensive service trade, and diversified emerging markets, the fundamentals of foreign trade growth continue to be stable.
Looking to the next stage, the favorable conditions supporting the development of foreign trade have not changed. The resilience, vitality and competitiveness of foreign trade will still be an important foundation and advantage for my country to expand international cooperation.
The strength of hard-core industries is highlighted and the growth momentum of foreign trade is strong
In the first five months, the country’s total import and export of goods increased by 15.3% year-on-year, of which exports increased by 11.8% year-on-year.
Where does the motivation to maintain double-digit growth come from?
The relevant person in charge said that my country’s industrial foundation is solid, the industrial chain is complete, and the supply of high-quality and innovative products is constantly increasing. It can accurately adapt to the production and consumption needs of different fields and levels around the world, and also conforms to the global trend of intelligent and green transformation.
At the same time, our country is unswervingly expanding high-level opening up to the outside world, the “circle of friends” in foreign trade is growing day by day, and the majority of foreign trade entities are also pursuing innovation and change, and are tenacious and progressive.
Since this year, my country’s high-end intelligent manufacturing products have become the main export force, and the strength of hard-core industries continues to be highlighted.
Leading companies are actively promoting the overseas expansion of smart products. The global layout of leading enterprises in the smart warehousing industry is a typical microcosm of my country’s intelligent products going overseas.
At present, the company’s overseas expansion has covered many emerging markets: in Latin America, the company has worked with local storage system suppliers to create a “robot + infrastructure” integrated smart warehousing solution. The e-commerce smart warehouse launched in South Africa and the robot combination solution deployed for a Saudi third-party logistics company have successively won industry awards.
Small and medium-sized foreign trade companies rely on cross-border e-commerce to reach global terminal markets, injecting new vitality into foreign trade growth with new business formats and new models.
Accompanied by the beeping sound of the code scanning gun and the sound of announcements on the sorting line, packages were loaded onto the truck in an orderly manner and shipped to consumers as soon as possible.
According to statistics, in the first five months of this year, the overall import and export cross-border e-commerce declaration volume at Shanghai Pudong Airport Port reached 345 million tickets and 36.415 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44.8% and 10.6% respectively. Among them, the single-month import and export cross-border e-commerce declaration volume in May reached 81.37 million tickets and 8.592 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68.4% and 37.4% respectively, both reaching record highs.
From leading enterprises to small and medium-sized enterprises, the export of high-end intelligent products overseas has become an important factor supporting the rapid growth of foreign trade.
According to data from the General Administration of Customs, my country’s exports of mechanical and electrical products increased by 18.4% year-on-year from January to May, accounting for more than 60% of the total exports. They are the core driving force for overall export growth. The export of artificial intelligence-related products such as integrated circuits and computer parts is growing rapidly.
At the same time, diversified market layout further consolidates the resilience of foreign trade development.
Relevant statistics show that from January to May, my country’s import and export volume to ASEAN, the EU, and Africa all achieved double-digit growth, and its import and export volume to countries co-building the “Belt and Road” increased by 13.6%, accounting for more than half of the total import and export volume.
In April, my country’s imports and exports to the United States turned from falling to rising year-on-year, and continued to maintain growth in May.
The core advantages are stable in the long term and the two-wheel drive situation is taking shape
There is a basis for the rapid growth of foreign trade data and sufficient potential for sustainable development.
Experts in the industry said that the steady growth of foreign trade fully confirms the core advantages of my country’s complete manufacturing system and the layout of the entire industrial chain. This is the accumulation of results from my country’s long-term deep cultivation of foreign trade and continuous strengthening of export capacity building. It is also the core advantage and development confidence that my country’s foreign trade development must adhere to in the long term.
The entire industry chain is supported by an irreplaceable supply advantage.
my country has the most comprehensive and complete manufacturing system in the world, forming a complete closed loop from core parts and components, complete machine manufacturing to supporting services, and can quickly adapt to the differentiated needs of the global market.
On this basis, my country’s export product structure continues to iteratively upgrade in the direction of high technology and high added value.
High value-added products, represented by AI-related mechanical and electrical products, new energy vehicles, high-end consumer goods, biomedicine, etc., have become the core new engine driving export growth.
The export advantages of this type of high value-added products are a concentrated expression of my country’s scientific research and innovation capabilities, advanced manufacturing levels and complete supply chain system advantages. Transformation into a global supplier of high-quality products, this good development trend must continue to be consolidated.
In the future, we need to continue to strengthen the two-way linkage and positive interaction between domestic industrial upgrading and foreign trade exports, and rely on the competition test and demand stimulation of the international market to reversely empower the iterative upgrading of domestic industries.
While trade in goods is improving in quality and efficiency, trade in services is becoming a new breakthrough for the high-quality development of foreign trade.
In the Jiangsu Suzhou Biomedical Industrial Park, many companies have intensively signed service export orders.
A number of biotech companies have reached global R&D cooperation and overseas licensing agreements with overseas pharmaceutical companies to promote independent intellectual property rights pharmaceutical results to the global market.
It is understood that in the first five months of this year, the park launched 8 overseas cooperation projects with independent intellectual property rights in biomedicine, and the cumulative transaction amount exceeded US$26.6 billion, an increase of more than 5 times compared with the same period last year.
The “15th Five-Year Plan” outline proposes to vigorously develop service trade, encourage service exports, enhance the international competitiveness of transportation, travel and other services, and develop knowledge-intensive service trade.
Industry analysts point out that China’s service trade deficit has narrowed in recent years and the competitiveness of some service exports is increasing. There is still considerable room for improvement in this area.
Relevant statistics show that from January to April, my country’s service exports were 985 billion yuan, an increase of 15%.
Exports of knowledge-intensive services maintained rapid growth. From January to April, imports and exports increased by 5.1% year-on-year, accounting for 44.4% of the total service imports and exports.
Knowledge-intensive service trade with high added value and low energy consumption is driving my country’s foreign trade to shift from relying on single goods trade to a new two-wheel drive model of “goods + services”.
Policies continue to increase efforts to consolidate the foundation of a strong trade country
Despite the bright start of foreign trade, the external environment remains complex and severe.
Many experts said that the current basic conditions and favorable factors supporting the high-quality development of my country’s foreign trade have not changed. In the future, systematic policy support will be further used to consolidate the foundation of a strong trade power.
Industry experts pointed out that China’s trade resilience stems more from micro-capacity building over the past decade than from any short-term macro-environmental changes. The next policy focus should be to further enhance the competitiveness of China’s trade at the micro-level and help enterprises in different industries continue to climb up the global value chain.
On the one hand, it is necessary to strengthen the value creation capabilities of mid- to high-end manufacturing industries.
For industries that are already globally competitive and located on the upward path of the value chain, we should continue to support the improvement of their R&D, standards, branding and supply chain organizational capabilities, so that they can further shift from scale advantages to value advantages.
On the other hand, vulnerable links must be reinforced accurately.
Energy, resources and some key intermediate products need to reduce risks through diversification of import sources, strategic reserves, supply chain security construction and technological substitution.
Supportive policies in the field of service trade also continue to be implemented and bear fruit.
Relevant departments have worked with relevant parties to introduce a series of policies this year, including promoting the export of travel services, standardizing service trade, accelerating the construction of the National Service Trade Innovation Development Demonstration Zone and the National Digital Trade Demonstration Zone.
At the same time, we will continue to implement the “Thousand Sails to the Sea” action plan for foreign cultural trade to help cultural enterprises explore international markets.
In the next step, relevant departments will continue to implement relevant policies and accelerate the cultivation of new momentum for trade in services.
