The improvement of China’s foreign trade competitiveness by new productivity is not driven by a single policy, but a complete system reconstruction from top-level design to industrial practice to corporate breakthrough.
From the perspective of macro data, China’s total foreign trade value in the first quarter of 2026 hit a historical high of 11.84 trillion yuan for the same period. Among them, the export of high value-added products represented by the “New Three Kinds” surged. This is a direct reflection of the development of new quality productivity.
To understand this process, we need to dismantle it from the three key dimensions of policy empowerment, industrial upgrading and corporate transformation.
From a policy perspective, the national plan has paved an institutional “fast lane” for the transformation of foreign trade
The policy is the top-level design for the development of new productive forces, and its core is to provide systematic support for technology-intensive exports.
In the “15th Five-Year Plan”, the National Development and Reform Commission placed the development of new productive forces at an unprecedented strategic level and deployed 28 directly related major projects, covering the entire chain from original innovation to large-scale promotion.
The “new” meaning of this planning logic is that it breaks the traditional industrial divisions and builds a new pedigree of coordinated development of “future industries – emerging industries – traditional industries”, pointing out the direction for the upgrading of foreign trade structure.
More specifically, the policy directly empowers enterprises through “customs clearance facilitation” and “new business format support”.
For example, the “advance declaration” and “one enterprise, one policy” services implemented by the customs have helped Cixi’s Yueli Group quickly respond to ASEAN orders, enabling its exports to ASEAN to reach more than 85 million yuan in 2025.
At the same time, the newly revised “Foreign Trade Law” clearly encourages the development of digital and green trade, providing legal protection for cross-border e-commerce imports and exports to reach 2.75 trillion yuan in 2025, and artificial intelligence product exports contributing more than 32% of the growth rate.
Together, these measures form the institutional basis for reducing the costs of companies going overseas and expanding trade patterns.
From an industrial perspective, the outbreak of the “three new things” is a concentrated transformation of technological advantages into trade advantages.
Profound changes in the industrial structure are the core battlefield for new productivity to enhance foreign trade competitiveness.
In the first quarter of 2026, China’s mechanical and electrical products exports accounted for 63.4%, and the export growth rate of the “three new items” (new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and wind power equipment) reached 60% year-on-year.
In sharp contrast, the proportion of labor-intensive product exports continues to shrink, falling to 9.5% in 2025, and growth fluctuates violently.
This scissor difference of “one rise and one fall” clearly outlines the trajectory of China’s foreign trade momentum transformation.
The strong growth of the “Three New Products” is rooted in China’s systematic leading advantages in related fields.
Taking new energy vehicles as an example, Chinese brands have formed comprehensive competitiveness in terms of battery life, smart cockpits, and cost control. However, European car companies are lagging behind in transformation and Tesla’s production capacity is limited, leaving a market window for Chinese brands.
More importantly, China has the only complete new energy vehicle industry chain in the world, with end-to-end coverage from lithium mines to complete vehicles. This resulted in a 50.4% increase in lithium battery exports in the first quarter, which is essentially the core supply chain for the new energy industry.
This kind of industrial control is difficult for any competitor to copy in the short term.
From an enterprise perspective, the shift from “OEM” to “Brand and Technology Output” is the key to a jump in competitiveness
Enterprises are the ultimate carrier of policy and industrial dividends, and their transformation path directly determines the “gold content” of foreign trade.
Driven by new productivity, successful foreign trade companies are achieving breakthroughs from three directions:
- Technological innovation drive: For example, Shenzhen’s Thunderbird Innovation, relying on self-developed near-eye display optical technology, its overseas sales of AR glasses increased nearly 4 times year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, and were quickly sold out on Amazon sites in many European countries, achieving a transition from technological catch-up to market leadership.
- Brand breakthrough overseas: Yueli Group shifted from traditional OEM to creating its own “Xiao Shi” brand, developed high-speed hair dryers for the ASEAN market, successfully opened up the market through the establishment of offline stores, and became a model for upgrading traditional manufacturing brands.
- High-end rise in the industrial chain: Jiangsu Gangyang Co., Ltd. provides core power components for Chinese racing cars, helping them win the world’s top events. The success of the event directly drives a surge in overseas orders, and the direct export value in 2025 is nearly 30 million US dollars.
Integrated judgment: New productivity is driving China’s foreign trade from “scale advantage” to “system resilience”
Based on the above three dimensions, the logical chain of new productivity to improve foreign trade competitiveness is clear: it is a set of combinations.
Policies provide direction and infrastructure, industrial upgrading builds core advantage clusters, and enterprises’ micro-innovation transforms advantages into tangible orders and market share.
The biggest change brought about by this transformation is that the “system resilience” of China’s foreign trade has been significantly enhanced.
On the one hand, the market structure is more diversified. In the first quarter of 2026, the proportion of exports to ASEAN, Africa, and Latin America rose to 31.5%, while the proportion of exports to the United States dropped to 9.9%, effectively hedging the risks of a single market.
On the other hand, the source of competitiveness has shifted from cost and scale in the past to technology, brand and entire industry chain control.
Although it still faces challenges such as “stuck” key technologies, escalating trade barriers and geo-supply chain risks, through strategies such as “China +” production capacity layout and participation in the formulation of international standards, China’s foreign trade is forming new competitiveness that is centered on technological and system advantages and is more difficult to replace.
This is not only an upgrade of products, but also a profound reshaping of China’s role and voice in the global trading system.
