Beijing
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China recorded the world’s largest ever trade surplus in 2025, capping off a yr by which the world’s largest producer defied US trade strain by ramping up exports to different international markets.
The enormous trade surplus – a measure of how rather more a rustic exports than it imports – stood at a document $1.2 trillion, marking a 20% soar from 2024 with Chinese firms deepening their pivot away from US customers towards rising markets in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
China’s exports to the US, traditionally China’s largest single market, was down 19.5% total in 2025 versus the earlier yr.
But whereas Beijing’s resilience within the face of US President Donald Trump’s trade warfare shall be heralded as a victory inside China, globally, the excess dangers additional inflaming trade tensions amongst nations who concern being overwhelmed by lower-cost Chinese imports.
Chinese officers have touted robust trade, notably in key sectors such as electric vehicles, as an indication of the nation’s sturdiness, even with exports to the US dropping steeply because the world’s two largest economies engaged in a tit-for-tat trade confrontation all through final yr.
China “forged ahead” despite dealing with a “complex and challenging external environment,” Wang Jun, deputy administrator of the customs bureau, instructed a press briefing on Wednesday.
Exports of high-tech items, a class together with high-end machine instruments and industrial robots, elevated by 13% yr on yr, whereas exports for electrical autos, lithium batteries and photovoltaic merchandise, like photo voltaic panels, had been up 27%.
Instead of seeing exports sink because the US and China ratcheted up tariffs on one another’s items, China has pushed its merchandise deeper into different markets around the globe – constructing on the nation’s international financial footprint and methods Chinese firms developed throughout Trump’s first trade warfare.
Exports to areas past the US noticed vital will increase, with the worth of products despatched to Africa up 26.5%, Association of Southeast Asian nations up 14%, the European Union up 9% and Latin America up 8% year-on-year.
That’s prompted frictions with main buying and selling companions internationally, who’ve raised considerations about what they see as unfair trade practices and an inflow of Chinese merchandise hurting their key home industries, impacting jobs and threatening financial safety.
During a current go to to Beijing, French President Emmanuel Macron described his nation’s mounting trade imbalance with China as unsustainable, echoing European coverage makers who’ve urged Beijing to extend home consumption and curb exports.
Nonetheless, robust exports all through final yr supplied Beijing with the required confidence to face toe-to-toe with the US throughout months-long trade negotiations – which got here to a head in October, when Trump and Chinese chief Xi Jinping met and agreed to a truce that whittles new tariffs on Chinese items down to twenty%. Tariffs had briefly risen as excessive as 145% earlier that yr.
That truce has remained in place, although Trump on Monday stated nations that do enterprise with Iran will face a brand new 25% tariff – an announcement that might topic China, a key financial lifeline for the regime in Tehran, to elevated duties.
Exporters are ready for extra frictions within the relationship to return, as Trump has made decreasing dependence on China and bringing again American manufacturing a tenet of his administration.
Analysts have questioned whether or not China can preserve its stage of exports to the remainder of the world within the yr forward – particularly as nations more and more discover methods to guard home markets from what’s generally known as Chinese “industrial overcapacity.”
China’s reliance on exports as a progress engine can be tied to challenges at house, the place the economic system is dragged by an ongoing property sector disaster.
Authorities have struggled to spice up home consumption and obtain a desired mannequin, by which the nation’s huge manufacturing sector is powered by robust demand each at house and overseas.