Trade & Exports

The Xi-Trump diplomatic thaw and China's export-control toolkit are advancing on the same track, and the clearest new evidence is a licensing order, not a customs figure. On 22 September MOFCOM and four other departments — Public Security, Emergency Management, Customs (GACC) and the drug regulator (NMPA) — issued Announcement No. 40, expanding the catalog of precursor chemicals whose export requires a licence; shipments of the newly added substances to the United States, Mexico and Canada now need permission ¹. That lands days after Xi's state visit to the US was confirmed ². The read: Beijing wants to negotiate from a position where the levers are being added, not removed.

The mechanism matters. Precursor chemicals sit on the fentanyl-adjacent supply chain Washington has pressed hardest on, and the three named destinations — US, Mexico, Canada — are exactly the North American corridor where that enforcement is negotiated. By controlling the export side rather than retaliating on the import side, Beijing adds a different class of instrument to the pecan anti-dumping extension already pointed at US agriculture ³. The US remedies machinery runs untouched in parallel: the tin mill countervailing duty with a critical-circumstances retroactivity finding ⁴, the steel-rack review ⁵ and USTR's comment pipeline feeding the 2027 National Trade Estimate ⁶. A head-of-state visit sits above that docket; it does not switch it off.

Diplomacy is now running on two tracks. The MFA calls the mutual visits inside six months "historic and milestone," framing the goal as a constructive strategic-stability relationship ². But Beijing is simultaneously consolidating the Global South channel: Vice President Han Zheng will attend the 81st UNGA general debate in New York on 24-26 September, where he will also host a high-level dialogue marking five years of the Global Development Initiative ⁷. The GDI claims more than $23 billion mobilised and over 2,000 projects across 70-plus countries ² — development finance as the soft-power arm of export diversification.

The diversification scaffolding keeps thickening. The 5th Global Digital Trade Expo opens in Hangzhou on 23-27 September with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar and Kyrgyz Prime Minister Kasymaliev attending ⁷ — a digital-trade format that pulls in ASEAN and Central Asia at once. That sits alongside the 23rd China-ASEAN Expo under the CAFTA 3.0 theme ⁸ and CIFTIS's pledge of high-standard services opening ⁹. Provincial numbers keep proving redirection converts into hard volume: Liaoning's first-eight-month trade hit a same-period record 527.4 billion yuan, exports up 13.4%, with ASEAN its top partner at 97.2 billion yuan (+19.1%), Africa up 83.8% and Central Asia up 91% ¹⁰.

The overcapacity core is unchanged and is what generates partner pushback. NBS August data show industrial value added up 5.2%, equipment manufacturing up 12.1% and high-tech manufacturing up 16.7%, with lithium-ion battery output up 57.2% and industrial robots up 34.6% ¹¹. SAFE's August read showed $1.5 trillion in non-bank cross-border receipts and payments and a net inflow of $62.4 billion led by goods trade ¹². That output must keep finding foreign buyers — which is why anti-dumping actions against Chinese goods remain the steady-state risk regardless of the summit choreography.

The limit in the new evidence is that nothing shows a tariff rollback or a purchase commitment attached to the Xi visit. The precursor-licence list is leverage, not a concession, and Han Zheng's GDI dialogue is development finance, not market access. Watch three things — whether the Xi visit produces a concrete tariff rollback or purchase deal, whether the precursor-licence regime is tightened or eased as a bargaining chip, and whether CAFTA 3.0 moves from expo theme to a signed protocol.