2025 panoramic observation of foreign trade: dual improvement of quality and efficiency, gathering momentum, diversified innovation, adding vitality
As an important pillar of the national economy and a core carrier of opening up to the outside world, China's foreign trade is a key window for observing the resilience of the Chinese economy and global competitiveness. In the complex environment of insufficient global economic recovery momentum, intensified geopolitical conflicts, and deep adjustments in the global trade pattern, China's foreign trade has withstood multiple pressures, consolidated its development resilience through diversified innovation, gathered momentum in transformation, and become an important force in stabilizing the macroeconomic situation and linking the domestic and international dual circulation.
In 2025, China's foreign trade will achieve a dual improvement in quality and efficiency on the basis of stable scale growth, accelerate the gathering of new driving forces, and continuously reshape its competitive advantages, bringing a satisfactory conclusion to the 14th Five Year Plan. As the starting year of the 15th Five Year Plan, 2026 marks a new historical starting point. China's foreign trade will be led by high-level opening up to the outside world, deepening reform and innovation, expanding cooperation space, laying a solid foundation for development while stimulating new momentum, seizing the high point of international competition while cultivating new advantages, and injecting strong impetus into building a new development pattern and promoting high-level opening up to the outside world.
Quality improvement, stable quantity, and remarkable toughness
Structural optimization gathers kinetic energy
China's foreign trade in 2025 has delivered the final answer to the 14th Five Year Plan with the goal of "improving quality and maintaining stable quantity". In terms of total volume, the total import and export value for the year is expected to reach a new high. According to data from the General Administration of Customs, the total value of China's goods trade imports and exports in the first 11 months has reached 41.21 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.6%. Among them, exports amounted to 24.46 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.2%; Imports amounted to 16.75 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.2%.
Against the backdrop of a slowdown in global trade growth, such achievements not only demonstrate the "hard power" of steady progress in scale, but also highlight the "soft power" of continuous structural optimization. China's foreign trade resilience continues to strengthen in improving quality and efficiency.
The achievement of this result cannot be separated from the continuous improvement of the policy support system.
Since the beginning of this year, policies and measures to accelerate the integration of domestic and foreign trade have helped foreign trade enterprises cope with market fluctuations and enhance competitiveness; The Ministry of Commerce and 9 other departments have issued the "Several Policy Measures to Promote Service Exports", which proposes 13 measures to further promote service exports and promote high-quality development of service trade; The Implementation Opinions on Expanding Green Trade issued by the Ministry of Commerce pave the way for the development of green trade from multiple aspects such as standard docking, platform construction, and enterprise cultivation; The State Administration of Foreign Exchange has launched a new policy to facilitate cross-border trade transactions, simplify processes, reduce costs, and significantly improve the efficiency of enterprise capital turnover... A series of policies have been coordinated to form a comprehensive support network covering finance, taxation, customs clearance, new formats, and other fields. This not only provides solid guarantees for foreign trade enterprises to overcome difficulties and resist external risks, but also clarifies the direction for enterprises to engage in technological innovation, format transformation, and market development, making the policy environment for foreign trade growth more favorable and development confidence stronger.
The core highlight of China's foreign trade in 2025 is the coordinated optimization of the three major structures of products, formats, and markets, which promotes the shift of growth momentum from quantity expansion to quality improvement. Professor Lv Yue from the National Institute of Opening up at the University of International Business and Economics said in an interview with Securities Daily that the "high-precision" transformation of product structure is particularly impressive. In the first 11 months, the export of mechanical and electrical products reached 1.489 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.8%, accounting for 60.9% of the total export value. Among them, the year-on-year growth rates of integrated circuits and automobile exports reached 25.6% and 17.6% respectively, while new energy related products maintained high-speed growth. From "Made in China" to "Made in China", high-tech and high value-added products have become the main force of export growth, confirming that foreign trade growth has moved away from dependence on quantity expansion and turned towards a new track of technological innovation and value enhancement.
Innovative business models have injected fresh vitality into foreign trade. Since the beginning of this year, the scale of service exports has steadily expanded, and digital trade has formed new growth points relying on cross-border e-commerce and digital delivery; New business models such as market procurement trade and bonded maintenance continue to grow under policy empowerment. It is worth noting that the rise of green trade not only conforms to the global trend of energy transformation, but also gives China's foreign trade an advantage in the green track, continuously strengthening its competitive advantage.
The diversified market layout has significantly improved the ability of foreign trade to resist risks. ASEAN continues to remain China's largest trading partner, with a total trade value of 6.82 trillion yuan in the first 11 months, a year-on-year increase of 8.5%; Maintain a year-on-year growth rate of 5.4% for traditional markets such as the European Union, with a total trade value of 5.37 trillion yuan; Leading the export growth rate to emerging markets such as Africa; The total import and export to countries jointly building the "the Belt and Road" was 21.33 trillion yuan, up 6% year on year.
Song Siyuan, Associate Researcher at the Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, told Securities Daily reporters that the pattern of "stabilizing traditional markets and expanding emerging markets" effectively offsets the risk of single market fluctuations, allowing China's foreign trade to sit on a fishing boat in the global market turbulence. This is precisely where the resilience brought by structural optimization lies.
The vitality of market entities has burst forth, laying a solid foundation for stabilizing foreign trade. Song Siyuan stated that private enterprises will continue to play the role of stabilizing foreign trade this year. In the first 11 months, the total import and export volume of private enterprises reached 23.52 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.1%, accounting for 57.1% of the total foreign trade value, an increase of 1.8 percentage points from last year. From high-tech enterprises deeply involved in niche fields to small and medium-sized businesses adept at cross-border e-commerce, private enterprises complement steadily growing foreign-invested enterprises and transforming state-owned enterprises with their strong innovation vitality and adaptability. The positive interaction among various market entities not only demonstrates the significant results of the continuous optimization of China's business environment, but also strengthens the endogenous driving force of foreign trade growth.
Innovation empowers new journey
Open up and gather strength for development
Looking ahead to 2026, China's foreign trade is accelerating towards the goal of cultivating new competitive advantages.
The Proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the 15th Five Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (hereinafter referred to as the "15th Five Year Plan Proposal") proposes to "promote innovative development of trade", "promote the improvement of foreign trade quality and efficiency, and accelerate the construction of a strong trading country". The Central Economic Work Conference proposed to encourage and support service exports, actively develop digital trade and green trade.
In the opinion of the interviewed experts, the new driving force of foreign trade in the future will accelerate its aggregation through the coordinated efforts of technology driven, green transformation, and institutional innovation.
The deep empowerment of digital technology will become the core engine of new momentum in foreign trade, "said Lv Yue." By 2026, cross-border e-commerce, digital delivery services, and intelligent supply chains will accelerate their integration. As a new production factor, data elements will continue to improve transaction efficiency and market response speed, promoting the coordinated expansion of goods trade and service trade.
Song Siyuan believes that in the field of goods trade, the continuous enhancement of innovative driving forces such as breakthroughs in high-tech product research and development, independent and controllable industrial chains, and intelligent manufacturing upgrades will continuously optimize China's foreign trade development structure and strengthen its competitiveness in the trade market. In the field of service trade, the integration of service digitization and high-quality development of service outsourcing will enhance the level of service exports. In addition, the global energy transition continues to advance, and the demand for green products, green supply chain construction, and low-carbon technology services in various countries is constantly increasing. This will provide new opportunities for China's green trade in the international market.
The Central Economic Work Conference will make "actively developing digital trade and green trade" a key task for next year. The proposal for the 15th Five Year Plan also clearly states the expansion of intermediate goods trade and green trade.
Lv Yue expects that the export demand for new energy equipment, green manufacturing products, and low-carbon services will continue to expand next year, and policy guidance will resonate with market demand. At the same time, green standards and carbon regulations will force enterprises to upgrade and promote the transformation of foreign trade from cost advantages to sustainable advantages.
Fu Yifu, a special researcher at Suzhou Commercial Bank, stated that cultivating new momentum in foreign trade in 2026 requires coordinated efforts from multiple dimensions such as policy guidance, rule alignment, and market expansion. Firstly, it is necessary to closely follow the spirit of the Central Economic Work Conference, actively develop digital trade and green trade, and encourage service exports. This requires leveraging platforms such as pilot free trade zones to promote rule pilots in cross-border data flow, mutual recognition of standards, and deepen institutional openness. Secondly, we need to promote balanced development of imports and exports, actively increasing imports while expanding the export of high value-added products, and promoting sustainable development of foreign trade. Once again, it is necessary to deepen the integration of domestic and foreign trade, by building comprehensive service platforms and promoting measures such as "same line, same standard, and same quality" products, to enhance the integrated management capabilities of enterprises and strengthen their resilience in resisting market risks. Finally, we should continue to optimize the business environment, strengthen service support for small and medium-sized enterprises, integrate overseas warehouses and other resources, and help enterprises efficiently explore diversified international markets.
The results of optimizing the foreign trade structure in 2025 have laid a solid foundation for building a strong trading nation; The accelerated gathering of new driving forces in 2026 will steadily propel China's foreign trade towards the mid to high end of the global value chain. China's foreign trade will break through the bottleneck of core competitiveness through technological innovation, seize the opportunity of global industrial transformation through green transformation, expand new space for international cooperation through institutional openness, provide stronger support for the high-quality development of the Chinese economy, and inject certainty into the recovery of global trade.