Trade & Exports

China's export engine is still running at high volume, but the story is no longer volume — it is where exports come from and what they contain. The clearest anchor is geographic: trade with other SCO members reached 8% of China's total foreign trade in 2025, up from $12.1 billion in 2001 to $523.5 billion, according to MOFCOM spokesperson Huang Ling ¹. That structural shift matters because Beijing is building an alternative trade architecture even as Washington keeps the surplus issue on the G20 agenda.

Within that architecture, value-chain upgrading is the dominant dynamic. Liaoning's Jan–Jul exports rose 12.2% to 2634.8 billion yuan, with machinery and electronics at 53.3% of exports (up 2.9 percentage points); ship exports grew 1.78 times and industrial robots 164.2% ². Hengli Heavy Industry's two additional VLCC orders from Greece's Danaos (20 total) and its first contract with Italy's Pemont for two LRII tankers mark entry into the southern-European high-end shipbuilding market ². The 'smile curve' shift — from assembly to design and core components — is now measurable in the export data.

Diversification vectors are multiplying. Zhejiang's trade with other SCO members hit a record 292.03 billion yuan in Jan–Jul (+9.8%), with imports up 20.2% and mechanical/electrical products at 52.7% of exports ³. The CCPIT is stepping up SCO business matchmaking and commercial legal services; six SCO member states exhibited at the fourth China International Supply Chain Expo in June ⁴. The sub-national layer is active too: Liaoning's third export fair in Ulaanbaatar signed a $4 million steel-structure order ⁵, Macao's Singapore roadshow produced 74 signed projects ⁶, and the 30th Shandong-Taiwan trade fair in Weifang deepened cross-strait industrial integration ⁷.

A new frontier is digital trade. The fifth Global Digital Trade Expo will run September 23–27 in Hangzhou, showcasing quantum computing, brain-computer interfaces, eVTOL aircraft and AI-powered trade tools — a sign that Beijing wants digital services to become a measurable export category, not just a hardware story ⁸. Green mobility exports continue to deepen: Shandong shipped articulated CNG buses to Cartagena, Colombia on August 29 ⁹.

The domestic-demand constraint remains the brake on any near-term 'dual circulation' rebalancing. The August manufacturing PMI rose 0.6 points to 49.8, with new orders at 50.6, but small firms remain at 47.9 and employment fell to 48.7 ¹⁰. A new MOFCOM-led implementation opinion on expanding commodity consumption targets 60 trillion yuan of retail sales by 2030 and ten-trillion-yuan green/smart/health consumer markets — but that is a domestic-market program, and its effects on import demand will take years ¹¹.

Risk accumulation continues on the trade-remedy and multilateral track. US final affirmative anti-dumping and countervailing determinations on van-type trailers took effect in late August ^12,13, and Treasury Secretary Bessent has framed China's surplus as a systemic issue ahead of the G20 ¹⁴. Meanwhile, Beijing is deepening its alternative architecture with Russia: Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang will attend the Eastern Economic Forum on September 2–4, with the 13th China-Russia investment cooperation committee meeting, the 23rd energy cooperation committee meeting, and the 8th China-Russia energy business forum scheduled ¹⁵.

Outlook: high export volumes and a large surplus persist, value-chain upgrading continues, and non-US diversification is broadening — but the accumulation of trade remedies and G20-level imbalance debate is the principal risk. The next tests are full-year 2026 destination data, the G20 communiqué, and whether the Digital Trade Expo converts into signed cross-border services contracts.