The foreign trade market surged in the first quarter of this year, with the country’s import and export of foreign trade goods reaching 11.84 trillion yuan, and both imports and exports achieved double-digit growth.
Affected by factors such as the explosive growth in global demand for AI computing power, the export value of integrated circuits, my country’s largest single foreign trade product, has increased by as much as 77.5%.
Behind this, semiconductor cities such as Xi’an, Chongqing, and Hefei are rising strongly, quietly rewriting the strength pattern of foreign trade cities across the country.
Data from the General Administration of Customs shows that in the first quarter of this year, the foreign trade import and export growth rates of Xi’an, Fuzhou, Chongqing, Tangshan, and Hefei were 74.2%, 35.6%, 34.3%, 33.8%, and 33.7% respectively, leading the country in growth rates.
Especially in Xi’an, which is not close to the sea or border, the scale of foreign trade has climbed to 181.922 billion yuan, surpassing the five cities of Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Dalian, Yantai and Foshan, becoming the “biggest dark horse” on the foreign trade map.
Behind the rapid growth of national foreign trade, trillion-dollar cities have become a stable support.
In the first quarter of this year, the foreign trade import and export scale of the country’s 29 trillion-yuan cities reached 8.15 trillion yuan, accounting for 68.9% of the country’s total, an increase of 1.5 percentage points compared with the same period last year.
These cities have different industrial structures and trading partners, resulting in very different foreign trade growth trends.
Xi’an, located in the inland of the west, stands at the largest “wind outlet”.
In the first quarter of this year, Xi’an’s total foreign trade import and export value was 181.922 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 74.2%.
Among them, exports were 141.406 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 95.9%; imports were 40.516 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.7%.
This import and export growth rate leads the nation’s trillion-dollar cities and is nearly 40 percentage points behind Chongqing, which ranks second.
It also broke the record set by Zhengzhou last year in one fell swoop, raising the “ceiling” of the trillion-dollar city’s foreign trade growth champion by more than 30 percentage points in the first quarter. The momentum is so strong.
Zeng Zhaoning, former vice president of the Shaanxi Economic Society, analyzed that Xi’an’s strong foreign trade growth is mainly driven by exports, with strong support from key industries such as semiconductors, new energy vehicles and photovoltaics.
Leading companies such as Samsung, BYD, and Longi Green Energy have strong global competitiveness and represent Xi’an’s advantages in these emerging industries.
Not long ago, Guanzhong Customs disclosed that the total import and export value of Xi’an in the first two months of this year was 113.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase
69.3%, accounting for 93.9% of Shaanxi’s total import and export value, 51 percentage points higher than the national import and export growth rate, of which mechanical and electrical product exports and imports accounted for 93.4% and 78.6% of the city’s total respectively.
This trend continues.
According to the March 2026 statistical bulletin from Xi’an Customs, Shaanxi’s exports of integrated circuits, automatic data processing equipment and parts, and electrical equipment in the first quarter were 76.147 billion yuan, 23.859 billion yuan, and 3.618 billion yuan respectively, representing year-on-year increases of 165.98%, 238.27%, and 81.61% respectively.
At the same time, the foreign trade import and export growth rate of Fuzhou, Chongqing, Tangshan, Hefei, Shenzhen, and Zhengzhou also exceeded 30%, and their performance was very impressive.
Fuzhou and Tangshan reversed the negative growth trend in the same period last year, and Chongqing, Hefei and Shenzhen also returned to the track of high foreign trade growth thanks to the explosion of the integrated circuit industry.
Under the strong growth momentum of some cities, the foreign trade pattern of the “Trillion GDP Club” has suddenly changed.
Shenzhen’s foreign trade import and export scale has passed the one trillion yuan mark, overtaking Shanghai with an advantage of more than 80 billion yuan, regaining its position as the number one foreign trade city.
The foreign trade import and export of Shenzhen and Shanghai were 1.32 trillion yuan and 1.23 trillion yuan respectively, a year-on-year increase of 33.6% and 21.9% respectively. They are the only cities in the country whose foreign trade exceeded one trillion yuan in the second quarter.
Behind them, Suzhou, the strongest prefecture-level city, also surpassed Beijing with a foreign trade growth rate of 26.5%, with a foreign trade scale of 799.993 billion yuan, taking the throne of the third city in foreign trade.
These five cities also form the first square of China’s foreign trade cities, forming a cliff-like lead.
At the same time, the foreign trade scale of Dongguan, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Qingdao and Chengdu is also more than 200 billion yuan, forming a relatively stable second echelon.
With its high foreign trade growth rate, Wuxi has surpassed Qingdao, Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Tianjin to become the eighth foreign trade city, while Chongqing has also surpassed Qingdao, Chengdu, and Tianjin to become the top ten foreign trade cities.
This is also a microcosm of the sudden changes in the national foreign trade pattern.
But whether it is the growth rate of foreign trade or the ranking of cities, Xi’an is undoubtedly the more popular one.
After consecutively defeating five cities: Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Dalian, Yantai and Foshan, Xi’an’s foreign trade scale rose from 19th to 14th, becoming the “biggest dark horse” on the national foreign trade map.
Looking forward, the gap with Tianjin has narrowed from more than 800 billion yuan to more than 100 billion yuan.
Looking backward, Xi’an also has a weak advantage over Zhengzhou.
Behind the growth rate of foreign trade is often the trend of industrial development.
In recent years, Xi’an’s semiconductor, photonics, and new energy automobile industries have rapidly risen in national visibility, forming new advantages in foreign trade competition.
In the past many years, my country’s semiconductor industry has shown a pattern of “strong in the east and weak in the west”, with the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta occupying the majority. However, in recent years, high-end elements have also accelerated their concentration in the central and western regions. In terms of the scale of integrated circuit import and export, in addition to Guangdong and Jiangsu, provinces such as Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Chongqing have jumped to the second echelon.
Focusing on Xi’an, it is home to the two giants Samsung and Micron, and the market share of flash memory chips it produces ranks first in the world.
Especially taking advantage of the global memory chip price increase cycle, overseas giants and new local forces are collectively investing in Xi’an.
From the first phase of the 8-inch chip production line in the northwest region that was put into production and the full year’s production capacity was ordered, to the recent announcement by Samsung Electronics that it has completed the first phase of the Xi’an factory process upgrade and has begun mass production of 236-layer (V8) products, Xi’an’s semiconductor production capacity is accelerating.
This will also further inject new impetus into foreign trade growth.
In the past two days, the share price of local company Yuanjie Technology once surpassed Kweichow Moutai and became the “new stock king” of A shares, which also attracted continued attention from the outside world to Xi’an’s semiconductor and photonics industry.
In the global competition for computing power infrastructure, optical chips are an easily overlooked sector—responsible for converting electrical signals into optical signals and are the core device within the data center and for interconnection.
As the “biggest domestic manufacturer” of optical chips, Yuanjie Technology has also become the focus of the capital market.
Not long ago, Yuanjie Technology disclosed a major investment plan. The company plans to invest approximately 1.251 billion yuan to build the second phase project of an optoelectronic communication semiconductor chip and device R&D and production base in Fengxi New City, Xixian New District, to further deepen its layout in the field of high-speed optical chips.
This will also further strengthen the advantages of Xi’an’s semiconductor industry.
Entering the “15th Five-Year Plan”, emerging pillar industries such as new energy vehicles, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence have become the focus of competition in various places and are also important growth poles supporting the growth of foreign trade.
Xi’an’s “15th Five-Year Plan” outline proposes to cultivate and expand emerging industries, promote the scale of emerging pillar industries such as intelligent connected new energy vehicles, semiconductors and photonics, and new energy, and promote the development of industrial clusters.
For example, it is necessary to focus on emerging fields such as wide bandgap semiconductors, advanced packaging, RISC-V and AI intelligent computing, strive for the deployment of 12-inch wafer manufacturing projects in Xi’an, and promote the construction of the second phase of the Silicon Industry Base in the High-tech Zone and the upgrading and transformation of the Xi’an flash memory chip V9 new product production line.
This will also further promote the cluster development of Xi’an’s semiconductor and photonics industries.
In the past, Xi’an Semiconductor’s development model was led by Samsung, driving packaging and testing, materials, equipment, and supporting services. However, now it has increasingly formed a two-wheel drive situation of “international giants + local leaders”, with more than 200 companies covering the entire chain from materials, design, manufacturing to packaging and testing, and application.
According to the plan, Xi’an will strive to have the scale of the intelligent connected new energy vehicle industry chain exceed 300 billion yuan, the scale of the semiconductor and photonics industry exceed 280 billion yuan, and the scale of the new energy industry exceed 160 billion yuan by 2030.
This also means that in the next five years, the scale of Xi’an’s emerging pillar industries will jump to more than 700 billion yuan, truly reshaping the city’s industrial competitiveness.
In Zeng Zhaoning’s view, these three emerging pillar industries that support the strong growth of foreign trade have actually formed a closely connected industrial chain that can promote each other and integrate development.
Xi’an has become an important new energy intelligent connected vehicle industry base in the country. The automobile and semiconductor industries are closely linked. In particular, the intelligence of new energy vehicles relies heavily on the support of semiconductors, and photovoltaic installations can also provide power.
In fact, foreign trade competition is ultimately urban industrial competition. Behind Xi’an’s foreign trade leadership is a signal of breakthrough in emerging industries such as intelligent connected new energy vehicles, semiconductors, photonics, and new energy. Whether they can be cultivated into “pillars” within the next five-year window period is the key to the transformation of urban development momentum.
