In daily life, we rarely pay attention to the transformer.
It does not appear in daily sight like mobile phones and home appliances. Most of them stay silently in substations, factory workshops or corners of communities. It is responsible for stabilizing voltage and ensuring smooth power transmission. It is a low-key power infrastructure equipment.
But such a seemingly ordinary industrial product suddenly became popular all over the world at the beginning of 2026. Overseas orders came in like a tide. Chinese factory production lines were spinning. Many companies have already scheduled orders for 2027 or even 2028, making it a real “new hot item” in foreign trade.
In the first quarter of 2026, China’s overall foreign trade performance was particularly impressive. The total import and export of goods reached 11.84 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15%. The scale hit a record high for the same period in history, and the growth rate was also the best level in the past five years.
Among the many export products, high value-added electromechanical products have become the biggest highlight, accounting for more than 60% of total exports, and transformers are the best among them. With stable quality and efficient delivery capabilities, they have quickly “out of the circle” in the international market and firmly occupy nearly 60% of the world’s production capacity share, becoming one of the core driving forces for foreign trade growth.
1. Overseas merchants come to lock production capacity, and China’s transformer orders are booming
Walking into the transformer production workshop in Liyang, Changzhou, Jiangsu, you can intuitively feel this wave of export boom.
Thousands of transformers that have just completed electrical testing are neatly arranged and will be shipped to 108 countries and regions around the world.
In addition to busy Chinese workers, there are also many foreigners in the workshop. They are not corporate employees, but purchasers from the United States, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates and other countries. They are squatting next to the equipment to check data, view drawings, and personally inspect the products for factory acceptance.
What deserves more attention is that these overseas merchants come to China not only to inspect and accept products, but more importantly, to lock in the future production capacity of the factory in advance.
In the past, Chinese companies took the initiative to go abroad to find orders, but now it is completely reversed. Overseas customers take the initiative to come to the door, fearing that they will not be able to grab production capacity if they are too late.
Xu Tao, deputy general manager of Jiangsu Huapeng Group, said that there are now too many overseas orders and the production lines are working in two shifts 24 hours a day. Even so, the delivery cycle is still very full.
Judging from the latest data, this wave of orders is not a short-term phenomenon, but a continued explosive growth trend.
In 2025, the total export value of China’s transformers will reach 64.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36.3%, reaching a record high.
In the first two months of 2026, the export value reached 9.267 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 41.42%, and the average export price of a single unit also increased by more than 30%.
As the “Transformer Capital of the World”, Changzhou’s exports exceeded 650 million yuan in the first two months of 2026, a year-on-year surge of more than 70%. In the first quarter, leading local companies had orders on hand of more than 3 billion yuan, of which export orders reached 2 billion yuan.
A transformer company in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, has orders on hand of nearly 700 million yuan in 2026, with exports accounting for over 90%, almost all of which are overseas orders.
Leading companies such as TBEA, Jinpan Technology, and Siyuan Electric have experienced explosive growth in overseas orders. In 2025, TBEA won the bid for Saudi Arabia’s 16.4 billion yuan ultra-high voltage transformer order, setting a record for China’s single export of power transmission and transformation equipment.
2. The global dual demand explodes, and China’s production capacity becomes the core supply
Transformers suddenly became a global hot commodity. The core reason is that the two “power needs” in the world broke out at the same time, and China just had the full production capacity to meet this demand.
The first driving force is the crazy expansion of AI data centers.
In 2026, artificial intelligence will enter an application explosion period. The demand for large models and cloud computing will surge, and data centers will become “power-eating monsters.”
The power of a single cabinet in a traditional data center is only 5-10 kilowatts, but now the power of AI intelligent computing centers has soared to 40-100 kilowatts, and supercomputing clusters have even exceeded 150 kilowatts.
The power consumption of a single large-scale AI data center is equivalent to that of a medium-sized city, and the demand for stable and efficient power equipment is growing exponentially.
Data centers are being built on a large scale in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and other places, but power facilities cannot keep up. Transformers have become one of the most in short supply equipment, with a global supply-demand gap of about 30%.
The second driving force is the global energy transition and power grid transformation.
In recent years, all countries have been promoting the development of new energy. The connection of wind power and photovoltaic power to the grid requires a large number of transformers to adapt; at the same time, the old power grids in Europe and the United States have entered a centralized update cycle, and there is an urgent need to replace new equipment.
Under the dual pressure of the rapid development of new energy and the aging of traditional power grids, global demand for power equipment continues to rise.
The International Energy Agency estimates that global data center electricity consumption has exceeded 650 terawatt hours in 2025, accounting for 2.3% of the world’s total electricity consumption. It is expected to soar to more than 1,000 terawatt hours in 2027.
When global supply is tight, China has become the most reliable “supply core.”
China currently accounts for about 60% of the world’s transformer production capacity and is the only country in the world with a complete industrial chain.
Take Changzhou as an example. There are more than 70 local transformer companies, forming a complete industrial cluster. Core components such as cores, coils, and insulation parts can all be supplied within a hundred kilometers of the Yangtze River Delta, and are 100% locally produced.
This complete supply chain brings huge advantages: the delivery cycle for a similar transformer produced abroad is 18 to 24 months, but Chinese companies can deliver it in as little as 4 months.
This time difference makes Chinese transformers the first choice for overseas customers. After all, the project is on schedule, and the earlier the power is supplied, the earlier the benefits will be generated.
3. From “Made in China” to “Intelligent Made in China”, the high-end market has steadily broken through
When Chinese industrial products were mentioned in the past, many people would think that they were “low price and high volume”, but this time the export of transformers completely broke this impression. Chinese companies rely on technology and quality to firmly stand in the high-end market.
The transformers now exported are no longer low-end basic models, but high-end products suitable for AI data centers and ultra-high voltage power grids.
For example, high-efficiency energy-saving transformers suitable for large data centers have losses that are 30% lower than traditional products; there are also high-voltage transformers above 500 kV, which are technically difficult. In the past, they were mainly imported. Now Chinese companies can independently develop and produce them, and they are also exported to high-end European and American markets.
As the leader in dry-type transformers, Jinpan Technology’s products have entered the data centers of leading companies such as Microsoft and ByteDance in the United States, with orders scheduled for production until 2027.
The special transformer developed by China Xidian for AI computing power needs was successfully used in the Gui’an data center and gained international recognition.
Improvements in quality and technology have also given Chinese transformers a higher premium.
The gross profit margin of exported transformers is 5 to 10 percentage points higher than that of domestic ones. For many high-end models, overseas customers are willing to increase prices by 20% to 40%, and even take the initiative to bear tariffs, just to get the goods as early as possible.
This shows that China’s transformers no longer compete on price, but on technology, quality and delivery capabilities, forming core competitiveness.
At the same time, the services of Chinese companies are also being upgraded.
Overseas customers have a lot of customization needs. It takes foreign companies 4 to 5 months to design a customized transformer, but Chinese companies can complete the design plan in one month and respond quickly to customers’ special requirements.
From production to delivery to after-sales, the entire system is complete. This is also an important reason why overseas customers are willing to cooperate for a long time and lock in production capacity in advance.
4. New signal of foreign trade transformation: Hard-core manufacturing has become the main force of growth
The explosion of orders for transformers is actually a microcosm of China’s foreign trade transformation and upgrading.
In the past, China’s exports were mostly low-value-added products such as clothing and toys. Now, high-value-added mechanical and electrical products and high-end equipment have become the mainstay, accounting for an increasing share.
In the first quarter of 2026, exports of mechanical and electrical products accounted for more than 60%, and products such as intelligent robots, transformers, and new energy vehicles have become the core driving force for foreign trade growth.
Behind this change is the confidence accumulated by China’s manufacturing industry over the years.
After decades of development, China has formed the most complete industrial system in the world, with complete industrial chain facilities, continuous technological breakthroughs, and continuous improvement in production efficiency.
Whether it is high-end technology research and development or large-scale mass production, we can quickly keep up with global market demand.
Coupled with a stable production environment and efficient logistics system, China’s manufacturing industry has become increasingly stable in the global supply chain.
For Chinese companies, this wave of overseas boom is both an opportunity and a challenge.
Having more orders can expand scale and improve efficiency, but we cannot just focus on the immediate orders. We must continue to increase technology research and development, improve product quality, and deploy new generation products such as solid-state transformers.
Only through continuous innovation can we remain competitive in the global market and turn short-term orders into long-term advantages.
A humble transformer can become a hot commodity in global foreign trade. Behind it is the transformation of China’s manufacturing industry from “Made in China” to “Intelligent Manufacturing in China”.
About 60% of the world’s production capacity, a steady stream of overseas orders, and the gradual breakthrough of the high-end market all prove the strength of China’s hard-core manufacturing.
This is not only the popularity of a product, but also a vivid reflection of the high-quality development of China’s foreign trade.
Amid changes in the global market, China’s manufacturing industry is embarking on its own path of upgrading with its complete industrial chain, excellent technology and efficient delivery capabilities, and is also injecting continuous impetus into China’s foreign trade growth.
What other upstream and downstream industries do you think this wave of transformer export boom will drive together?
