Trade & Exports

The Xi-Trump visit track and China's export-leverage track keep running in parallel, and the newest evidence is a premier-level stage rather than a customs figure: Li Qiang personally opened the 5th Global Digital Trade Expo in Hangzhou on 23 September ¹. The judgment holds — Beijing is adding instruments and platforms, not conceding market access. Nothing in this batch shows a tariff rollback or a purchase commitment attached to the state visit.

The digital-trade expo is the clearest new signal because of who showed up. Li's keynote made three points: read digital trade as the new frontier carrying new trade barriers and missing rules; push for freer, more inclusive and better-governed trade; and China will expand digital consumption, share market opportunity, and keep AI on an open-source path as a "digital ladder" other countries can climb ¹. Roughly 1,200 delegates from nearly 50 countries and international organisations attended, with UNIDO chief Müller speaking by video and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar and Kyrgyz Prime Minister Kasymaliev in person ^1,2. That upgrades the event from an ASEAN-China showcase into a rules-setting venue pitched at the Global South and Central Asia simultaneously.

The instrument actually on the negotiating table remains export control. MOFCOM Announcement No. 40 of 22 September, issued jointly with Public Security, Emergency Management, Customs and NMPA, added two substances to the precursor-chemical export catalogue, so shipments to the United States, Mexico and Canada now need a licence, while Myanmar, Laos and Afghanistan stay on the separate part-2 list ³. The named destinations are precisely the fentanyl-enforcement corridor Washington negotiates over. It lands days around the confirmed Xi state visit, which the MFA calls a historic, milestone mutual exchange within six months and frames as a constructive strategic-stability relationship ⁴. Leverage is being added, not traded away.

The diversification scaffolding keeps thickening in volume, not just rhetoric. The 23rd China-ASEAN Expo ran under the CAFTA 3.0 theme with more than 3,400 companies from over 70 countries across 170,000 square metres ⁵, and CIFTIS closed on 13 September with MOFCOM's Zhu Guangyao pledging high-standard services opening ⁶. Provincial numbers show redirection converting into hard tonnes: Liaoning's first-eight-month trade hit a same-period record 527.4 billion yuan, exports up 13.4%, ASEAN its top partner at 97.2 billion yuan (+19.1%), Africa up 83.8%, Central Asia up 91%, and processing trade up 36.5% ⁷. A fresh channel opened on 10 September when National Energy Administration chief Wang Hongzhi met Singapore's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Trade and Industry Yan Xiaofang on APEC energy cooperation and power interconnection ⁸.

The overcapacity core is unchanged and is what keeps partner pushback a steady state. NBS August data show industrial value added up 5.2%, equipment manufacturing up 12.1%, high-tech manufacturing up 16.7%, with lithium-ion battery output up 57.2%, industrial robots up 34.6% and 3D printing equipment up 29.9% ⁹. Output growth continues to outrun domestic absorption, so foreign buyers must take the difference — which is why anti-dumping exposure against Chinese goods persists regardless of summit choreography.

The limit is that domestic demand is the declared offset, not a substitute. Liaoning's consumption-promotion month from 15 September to 15 October uses ticket-stub vouchers across 25,000 merchants in nine consumption scenarios ¹⁰ — real stimulus, but it cannot absorb industrial growth at these rates. The batch also shows the topic's edges: precursor licensing is central, while the US renewal of Aeroflot's export privileges ¹¹ and the environment ministry's solid-waste planning ¹² are adjacent regulatory noise, not trade policy.

Watch four 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; whether CAFTA 3.0 moves from expo theme to a signed protocol; and whether the digital-trade expo yields an actual rules initiative — a digital or AI trade governance proposal — rather than just a venue.