Beijing
—
China recorded the world’s biggest ever trade surplus in 2025, marking a 20% jump from 2024, capping off a year in which the world’s largest manufacturer defied US trade pressure by ramping up exports to other global markets.
Together, China’s foreign trade in goods reached $6.48 trillion, its General Administration of Customs announced Wednesday, with trade growing for the ninth consecutive year. Its trade surplus – a measure of how much more a country exports than it imports – stood at a record $1.2 trillion.
China “forged ahead” despite facing a “complex and challenging external environment,” Wang Jun, deputy administrator of the customs bureau, told a press briefing.
Exports of high-tech goods, a category including high-end machine tools and industrial robots, increased by 13% year on year, Wang said, while exports for electric vehicles, lithium batteries and photovoltaic products, like solar panels, were up 27%.
Chinese officials have touted strong trade as a sign of the country’s resilience, even with exports to the US dropping steeply as the world’s two largest economies engaged in a tit-for-tat trade confrontation throughout last year.
Instead of seeing exports sink as the US and China ratcheted up tariffs on each other’s goods, China has driven its products deeper into other markets around the world – building on the country’s global economic footprint and hedges companies made during US President Donald Trump’s first trade war.
But that’s also caused frictions with trading partners across the world, who have raised concerns about what they see as unfair trade practices and an influx of Chinese products hurting their domestic industries.
Nonetheless, strong exports throughout last year gave Beijing confidence in its months-long trade negotiations with the US, which came to a head in October when Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met and agreed to a truce that whittles new tariffs on Chinese goods down to 20%. Tariffs had briefly risen as high as 145% earlier that year.
That truce has remained in place, though Trump on Monday said countries that do business with Iran will face a new 25% tariff – an announcement that could subject China, a key economic lifeline for the regime in Tehran, to elevated duties.
China’s trade with the US, historically China’s largest single export market, fell 16.9 percent in the first 11 months of the year, data shows.
Exporters are prepared for more frictions in the relationship to come, as Trump has made reducing dependence on China and bringing back American manufacturing a tenet of his administration.
Analysts have questioned whether China can maintain its level of exports to the rest of the world in the year ahead – especially as countries increasingly explore ways to protect domestic markets from what’s commonly called Chinese “industrial overcapacity.”
China’s reliance on exports as a growth engine is also tied to challenges at home, where the economy is dragged by an ongoing property sector crisis.
Authorities have struggled to boost domestic consumption and achieve a desired model, in which the country’s vast manufacturing sector is powered by strong demand both at home and abroad.
