On the morning of April 14, the State Council Information Office held a press conference to introduce the import and export situation in the first quarter of 2026.
Wang Jun, deputy director of the General Administration of Customs, said that in the first quarter of this year, China’s import and export of goods trade reached 11.84 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15%.
Among them, exports were 6.85 trillion yuan, an increase of 11.9%, and imports were 4.99 trillion yuan, an increase of 19.6%.
In the first quarter, imports and exports exceeded 11 trillion yuan, the first time in the same period in history, and the quarterly growth rate was also the highest in the past five years.
Regarding the situation of cross-border e-commerce, Lu Daliang, spokesperson of the General Administration of Customs and director of the Statistics and Analysis Department, said that China’s cross-border e-commerce statistical survey is conducted every six months, and official data is released in May and October.
Judging from preliminary estimates for the first quarter, China’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports in the first quarter of this year were 618.46 billion yuan, of which exports were 473.55 billion yuan and imports were 144.91 billion yuan.
Lu Daliang introduced that this year’s government work report has made arrangements to promote the standardized and orderly development of cross-border e-commerce. The customs has earnestly implemented the implementation and has mainly done three aspects of work.
First, based on the previous pilot, since April 1 this year, the cross-customs area return model for cross-border e-commerce retail exports has been fully promoted in customs across the country.
Under this business model, when cross-border e-commerce companies’ retail export goods are returned overseas, they can flexibly choose any port across the country to handle the return and entry procedures, effectively solving the industry pain point of difficult returns.
This move has greatly facilitated cross-border e-commerce companies, reduced their operational risks, and allowed them to expand overseas markets with greater peace of mind.
The second is to innovate and support the “TIR + cross-border e-commerce” logistics model. TIR is the Convention on International Road Transport.
Goods transported through TIR do not need to be repeatedly inspected or changed vehicles for reloading throughout the entire process in the contracting country, which can significantly reduce transportation time and logistics costs, making it more convenient for e-commerce goods to enter thousands of households at home and abroad.
This innovative logistics model not only improves logistics efficiency, but also enhances the competitiveness of China’s cross-border e-commerce in the international market.
The third is to strengthen the collaborative governance between customs and cross-border e-commerce companies. The customs and e-commerce platforms jointly create a “pre-supervision warehouse”, which means that customs supervision is pre-positioned in the production operations of enterprises. This can not only achieve effective supervision, but also greatly reduce the customs clearance time and logistics costs of cross-border e-commerce companies, achieving both supervisory effectiveness and logistics efficiency.
China’s economy will deliver a “starting answer” in 2026. At present, my country’s new productive forces are accelerating the growth, and the characteristics of high-quality development are becoming more and more distinctive.
These measures taken by the General Administration of Customs will effectively promote the healthy development of the cross-border e-commerce industry and provide a more solid guarantee for Chinese goods to go global.
