Trade & Exports

China's export engine remains strong, but the trade problem now runs in two directions. On 8 September, the USITC affirmed that Chinese L-lysine imports materially injure US industry ¹, while the same day MOFCOM published a preliminary anti-dumping ruling against Japanese dichlorosilane and began collecting security deposits ². That pairing is the new texture of China's trade environment: Washington keeps pressing with tariff and injury findings, but Beijing is also wielding its own trade-remedy tools — including on a semiconductor-material input. The standing judgment holds: surplus politics, not customs statistics, is the center of gravity, and the policy answer remains managed diversification on multiple fronts.

The subnational fair machinery that anchored the previous brief continues to whir. The 7th China Liaoning International Trade Fair will open in Shenyang on 23 September with Mongolia as guest of honor, nearly 3,000 guests from 50-plus countries, and a focus on foreign investment, 'Liao goods going overseas', and import expansion ³. A parallel procurement matchmaking event inside the Shenyang Manufacturing Trade Week drew procurement representatives from nearly 50 foreign buyers across more than 20 countries, including Russia, Mongolia and Tajikistan ⁴. These fairs are systemically embedded now — not one-off optics — and they are spreading from goods into services.

Services and intangibles are becoming a new export frontier. Guizhou is sending 10 firms in engineering, big data, culture and tourism to the China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing on 9-13 September ⁵. More striking, Yunzhisheng founder Huang Wei said his company is serving Ethiopian cross-border e-commerce clients from Chinese domestic computing power using the U2 model, delivering script generation and voice cloning; token output exceeded 10 billion in the first week ⁶. That is an early 'token export' model — exporting AI capability itself without building overseas compute infrastructure. If scalable, it adds a services-and-data layer to the diversification strategy that goes well beyond physical goods.

The physical corridor agenda is also advancing. The Yellow-Baise Railway (黄百铁路), a 312.34-km line from Guizhou's Huangtong to Guangxi's Baise, is more than half finished and scheduled for completion in 2028; it will connect inland Sichuan, Chongqing and Guizhou through the Beibu Gulf ports and the Pinglu Canal to Southeast Asia ⁷. This is the same pattern seen in Central Asia earlier — rail plus waterway plus sea to turn once-landlocked provinces into low-cost export gateways aimed at ASEAN rather than Western markets.

The US trade-remedy picture is mixed, not monotonic. Alongside the L-lysine affirmative determination ¹, the USITC revoked existing antidumping orders on walk-behind lawn mowers from China and Vietnam after a sunset review ⁸, and separately terminated a Section 337 semiconductor-device investigation after a joint motion to dismiss ⁹. Some pressure points are easing, others are hardening. China's own anti-dumping move against Japanese dichlorosilane — a key chemical for chip epitaxial and silicon-carbide films — signals that semiconductor upstream materials are now a dedicated battleground where Beijing is ready to impose duties, likely inviting further friction with Japan.

The strategic picture from the previous brief remains: Taiwan's economic integration with Europe has not reversed, and Beijing continues to use cross-strait industrial fairs as a counterweight. But the new material widens the story. China is not only a target of anti-dumping; it is also an active user. And its export basket is diversifying not just by destination but by type — from goods to services to AI tokens. None of this changes the bottom line that the trade surplus will stay sizable, but it means the near-term tell is no longer just the G20 communiqué language; it is also how China's own remedy actions and corridor infrastructure interact with the next round of US findings.