At the beginning of 2026, China’s foreign trade has ushered in impressive growth, with a growth rate of 18.3%.
Behind this “good start” report card is the synergistic effect of the proactive efforts to stabilize foreign trade policies and the release of new momentum for China’s manufacturing.
Proactive actions at the policy level have injected strong confidence into foreign trade companies.
The commerce department has clearly researched and introduced incremental policy measures focusing on intermediate product trade, production and supply chain cooperation, finance, taxation and finance, and is committed to consolidating the fundamentals of foreign trade.
Moreover, these policies are quickly implemented and effective. For example, in Shandong, policy-based financial instruments effectively serve small and micro foreign trade companies. Just three days after the policy was released, more than 10,000 companies were protected.
This is due to the empowerment of digital transformation. The industry cooperates with financial institutions and relies on big data and AI risk control models to launch purely online financing products, which effectively solves the bottleneck of “asset-light credit difficulties” for small and medium-sized cross-border e-commerce sellers.
Institutional openness is also deepening.
China has expanded its foreign trade space by negotiating more free trade agreements, expanding the cross-border use of RMB, and guiding companies to optimize their global layout.
For example, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 upgrade extends cooperation to new areas such as the digital economy and green economy, “fueling and accelerating” regional trade.
At the same time, multiple entities are developing collaboratively, with private enterprises playing the main role. In the first two months, imports and exports increased by 22.8%, and their exports of high-tech products accounted for nearly 60% of the country’s total. The imports and exports of foreign-funded enterprises also increased by 15.3%, and more than 90% of multinational companies continued to invest in China.
Policies stimulate market vitality by supporting these micro entities.
Industrial factors are the core engine of foreign trade growth, especially reflected in artificial intelligence (AI) and the recovery of global demand.
Global AI investment has entered a period of rapid expansion, directly reshaping the trade structure.
From January to February, exports of integrated circuits surged by 72.6% year-on-year, and exports of automatic data processing equipment increased by 20.6%. The two together drove export growth by about 4.5 percentage points.
What is more noteworthy is that the export price of integrated circuits increased by 55.7% year-on-year, significantly higher than the growth rate of export volume. This shows that the proportion of high-unit-price AI chips (such as GPUs) has increased significantly, and China’s exports are moving towards a higher value-added range.
At the same time, the recovery of global manufacturing demand provides a broad market.
The global manufacturing PMI rose to 51.9% in February, a 44-month high, which means that global factory activity has increased.
This has driven my country’s exports of various products. The export of mechanical and electrical products increased by 24.3%, of which automobile exports increased by 67.1%. The export growth rate of labor-intensive products such as textiles, clothing, furniture, etc. generally turned from negative to positive, achieving a significant recovery.
The diversified market layout also enhances the ability to resist risks.
In the first two months, my country’s imports and exports to ASEAN and the EU increased by 20.3% and 19.9% respectively, and the total imports and exports to countries jointly building the “Belt and Road” increased by 20%.
This has effectively hedged against some fluctuations in traditional market demand, and China’s foreign trade “circle of friends” has expanded to more than 190 countries and regions that have achieved growth.
The growth at the beginning of the year has made a good start for the whole year’s foreign trade with “steady quantity and quality improvement”.
