On January 14, 2026, the Deputy Director of the General Administration of Customs summed up my country’s foreign trade achievements in 2025 at a press conference as “very extraordinary and hard-won”.
Although China’s foreign trade companies are facing severe challenges in 2025 such as the “reciprocal tariff” policy, international geopolitical uncertainty, supply chain “deglobalization” and intensified regionalization, and China’s foreign trade supply chain and industrial chain are under great pressure from high volatility, China’s exports still withstand headwinds and countercurrents and perform strongly.
From a scale perspective, my country’s foreign trade import and export achieved growth for the ninth consecutive year in 2025, which is also the longest continuous growth since joining the WTO.
In 2025, foreign trade import and export will reach 45.47 trillion yuan, an increase of 3.8%, a record high. my country will continue to maintain its status as the largest country in global goods trade.
From a structural perspective, China’s export innovation will be outstanding in 2025.
Exports of high-tech products were 5.25 trillion yuan, an increase of 13.2%.
Exports of special equipment, high-end machine tools and industrial robots increased by 20.6%, 21.5% and 48.7% respectively. Especially for industrial robots, exports exceeded imports.
In the field of green energy, exports of lithium batteries and wind turbines will increase by 26.2% and 48.7% respectively in 2025; in the field of green travel, exports of electric motorcycles and bicycles will increase by 18.1%, and exports of electric railway locomotives will increase by 27.1%. High-quality green supply provides China’s solution for the global green transformation.
In addition, my country’s exports of self-owned brand products will increase by 12.9% in 2025, accounting for an increase of 1.4 percentage points in total export value.
New business formats and new models are booming. According to preliminary statistics from the customs, my country’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports in 2025 will be 2.75 trillion yuan, an increase of 69.7% over 2020.
It is worth mentioning that the cross-border e-commerce industry is undergoing differentiation.
A report from a well-known cross-border e-commerce research institution shows that in 2025, the number of new sellers on Amazon worldwide will drop to 165,000, a sharp decrease of 44% year-on-year. This is the lowest record since statistics began in 2015.
Emerging e-commerce platforms are constantly grabbing global market share. In 2025, Temu’s market share in global cross-border e-commerce sales will reach 24%, which is the same as Amazon. The two platforms together account for nearly half of cross-border sales.
In addition to Temu, the third-ranked SHEIN’s market share remained at 9%, while AliExpress’s was 8%.
In terms of merchants engaged in the cross-border e-commerce industry, in 2025, many traditional sellers in the cross-border e-commerce industry will face considerable challenges under the background of China’s tax compliance, the gradual cancellation of overseas small tax exemption policies, frequent intellectual property risks, and tightening of European and American data compliance.
At the same time, a group of cross-border e-commerce companies that adhere to independent brand strategies have shown strong development resilience.
The “China’s Top 100 Most Influential Cross-Border E-Commerce Brands (Fourth Quarter of 2025)” shows that among the 100 brands on the list, 95 have positive year-on-year search popularity growth, 86 have a growth rate higher than 20%, 66 have a growth rate higher than 50%, 19 have a growth rate higher than 100%, and 6 have a growth rate higher than 200%. The trend of brands going overseas is beginning to show.
