On June 23, the 17th Summer Davos Forum officially opened in Dalian.
Different from previous statements that focused on the direction of opening up, this annual meeting directly showed the achievements of free trade construction: China has implemented zero-tariff policies for 63 countries, and related import growth reached 20.5% in the first five months of 2026. At the same time, the second phase of the China-South Korea Free Trade Agreement negotiations and the China-Singapore Negative List Negotiation for Trade in Services have both finalized an acceleration schedule. Many policies are not paper plans, but practical dividends that can be directly converted into actual revenue for foreign trade companies.
The African market was the first to cash in on its dividends.
For importers, the favorable policies will bear fruit as soon as they are implemented: starting from May 1, 2026, China will fully implement zero tariffs with 53 African countries that have diplomatic relations with Africa. In the first month of the implementation of the policy, the national customs has reduced tariffs for African import companies by more than 120 million yuan.
Taking Kenyan green coffee beans as an example, the tariff has been directly reduced from 8% to zero. Only one leading domestic coffee import company estimates that it can enjoy a tariff reduction of millions of yuan throughout the year. The cost reduction of African fruit imports is more intuitive. For each imported container of African fruits, the cost drops by approximately 20,000 to 25,000 yuan. The price advantage directly drives the increase in consumer sales.
Data show that from January to May 2026, the total import and export volume between China and Africa exceeded 1.14 trillion yuan for the first time in history, a year-on-year increase of 18.2%. After the implementation of zero tariffs, the growth rate of non-agricultural product imports soared directly to more than 60%.
For export companies deeply involved in Africa, market dividends are also being released simultaneously.
Africa’s consumer market of 1.6 billion people is upgrading from “basic daily necessities” to “high-value industrial products”. In the first five months of 2026, China’s exports of mechanical and electrical products to Africa accounted for more than 70%. Among them, Hunan’s exports of “three new products” to Africa, including electric passenger vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar cells, increased by 104.6% year-on-year. Zero tariffs bring not only cost advantages, but also a new incremental market with rapid expansion of demand and simultaneous upgrade of consumption structure.
The second part of the incremental opportunities comes from the Northeast Asia and Oceania markets.
Regarding China and South Korea, the second phase of negotiations on the China-South Korea Free Trade Agreement was clearly accelerated by the meeting between the two prime ministers during the 15th round of negotiations. In the next three years, the scale of bilateral trade is expected to exceed US$450 billion, with an increase of over US$100 billion.
This negotiation is not about simply expanding the volume of goods transactions, but about the deep embeddedness at the industrial chain level, covering emerging fields such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, new energy, and biomedicine. For domestic semiconductor materials and power battery companies, this means the opportunity to directly enter the supporting system of the entire Korean chip industry chain. The current export growth rate of related products to South Korea has exceeded 30%.
The direction of New Zealand is also positive and clear. On June 5, the China-New Zealand Joint Economic and Trade Committee finalized the joint promotion of the Negative List Negotiation on Services Trade in the Free Trade Agreement. On the basis of the existing zero-tariff coverage of trade in goods, the new focus is on the expansion of imports of cross-border education, cultural tourism services, and specialty agricultural products, as well as export opportunities for China’s digital services and green technologies. The current bilateral trade volume between China and New Zealand has reached 27 billion U.S. dollars, and is expected to exceed 40 billion U.S. dollars in 2027 after the upgrade.
Industry insiders pointed out that the multiple free trade policy dividends released this time are not a simple incremental superposition, but have formed a gradient and implementable practical framework: for import traders, Africa’s zero-tariff policy is an instant bonus for “immediate tax reductions”
For export manufacturing companies, the second phase of China-South Korea free trade negotiations is a medium- and long-term opportunity to “lock supporting positions in the industrial chain in advance”; for service trade and green technology companies, the China-Singapore negative list negotiations for service trade are an incremental window to “open a new track.”
In addition, Northeast coastal cities such as Dalian continue to reduce trade costs by relying on the advantages of bonded zones. Currently, the logistics cost of Chery’s Dalian base for overseas shipments is more than 15% lower than inland. The revenue of biopharmaceutical companies in the Dalian Free Trade Zone increased by 85.7% year-on-year. Many policies have entered the implementation stage, and foreign trade companies can plan in advance according to their own tracks to seize the increase.
