China needs to keep its trade surplus running at full throttle. That means exporting the bundle of goods the so-called Global South actually needs, a mix quite different from what developed economies buy. This workaday portfolio has been the backbone of China’s export growth, and Beijing cannot keep the surplus up if it abandons it. Worried about companies rushing into heavily subsidised “fancy” sectors and neglecting the more mundane manufactures that developing countries can afford, Qiushi, the Party’s journal, has stepped in with a warning: developing new quality productive forces does not mean ignoring or abandoning traditional industries. Do not rush in a herd.
China is on track for a record 2025 goods trade surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion, more than 1% of the rest of the world’s GDP
With projects active in 51 of Africa’s 54 countries, China has turned the continent into a testbed for its model of infrastructural statecraft: financing and building roads, ports, and power plants while locking in long-term political goodwill and access to critical resources. This near-continental coverage gives Beijing leverage in multilateral forums, helps dilute Western diplomatic pressure, and embeds Chinese companies and standards deep into Africa’s future growth. But it also concentrates risk on a single external actor: debt exposure, technical reliance, and contract opacity narrow African governments’ policy space and harden patterns of dependency.
China’s import profile from Africa has become almost purely extractive. Commodities rose from 77% in 2015 to 99% in 2024, leaving little space for value-added exports and reinforcing a dig-and-ship relationship rather than broader industrial linkages.
Surprising at first glance, but there are clear, near-term policy and demand reasons why China’s Jan–Sep imports from the U.S. of HS 85423190 (processors/controllers) and 85423990 (other ICs) more than doubled year on year.
The main driver was tariff whiplash that explicitly favoured these lines: in late April 2025 China informally exempted several U.S.-origin chip subheadings from the new 125% “reciprocal” tariff. Importers reported same-day clearance at 0% additional duty (VAT only) and refunds for duties paid between 10–24 April, cutting prices for U.S.-origin non-memory ICs overnight and lifting imports from May onward.
Export controls targeted “AI chips,” not most analog, MCU, or other mature-node parts, so much U.S. content remained licensable and shippable. Buyers front-loaded orders and stockpiling continued.
China’s container exports have split this year: standard 20- and 40-foot boxes fell 18% and 14% in Jan–Sep, while insulated 40-foot units rose about 25%. Longer Cape detours are stretching cycle times, perishables are in season, some pharma and food are shifting from air to sea, and new EU refrigerant rules are pulling forward replacements, all of which lift reefer demand. Dry boxes are digesting a 2024 overbuild and softer discretionary trade
Sixty percent of the EU’s freight-container purchases are made in China.
The EU and its member states have reservations about the commercial practices of Chinese online platforms. France’s government is moving to suspend access to the SHEIN online marketplace until the platform demonstrates that its content complies with French law, while Spain’s consumer watchdog warns about “dangerous” products.
After testing 162 items from the two Chinese platforms, it found that 112 did not comply with EU safety regulations, making their sale in the European market illegal.
China’s 14th Five-Year Plan did not fix a coal mining cap. It set an all-energy domestic production floor of at least 4.6 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent by 2025 and called for strictly controlling the growth of coal consumption. The emphasis was security and stability on the supply side, while raising the non-fossil share on the consumption side.
Domestic coal mining rose from about 4.1 billion tonnes in 2021 to about 5.0 billion tonnes in 2025. Imports add roughly 6% to market availability. Even with this increase, coal does not ‘break’ the plan. It underwrites most of the all-energy floor, allowing the system to meet demand without blackouts and to absorb more wind and solar.
The plan was “flexible” by design. It let China guarantee supply now with coal while nudging the mix cleaner on the consumption side. The output numbers are consistent with that design: coal shouldered the reliability job, non-fossil kept expanding, and consumption growth remained manageable.
Travelers may have deferred trips to the long October holiday that overlapped with Mid-Autumn festival; October data to be published in December will test that.
State media trumpet near-record visitor inflows but sidestep the tepid appetite for travel abroad (see previous entry), suggesting fragile consumer trust in China’s economic trajectory.
Germany ran a big auto-trade surplus with China for a decade, peaking in 2022. Exports climbed from €11bn in 2013 to nearly €19bn in 2022 while imports stayed small, so the surplus rose toward €19bn.
Since 2022 the surplus has collapsed. Exports fall sharply in 2023–2024 and the 2025 estimate keeps dropping, taking the surplus down to single digits. The squeeze is export-driven, not an import surge.
We’re not talking about service robots like the Roomba in your living room. We mean industrial robots for factory floors. Years ago China set out to apply its low-cost playbook to automation by mass-producing industrial robots as if they were everyday goods. That strategy is now taking hold.
Collaborative robots now account for 15% of China’s robot exports, up from 10% last year. The five-point rise signals that factories are prioritising affordable, human-compatible automation, where low-cost Chinese models are quickest to scale.
At the opening of the China International Import Expo (CIIE), Premier Li Qiang said China’s GDP is projected to reach $23.9 trillion by 2030. Moving from an estimated $18.7 trillion in 2024 to $23.9 trillion by 2030 implies a 4.2% nominal-USD CAGR which is plausible with modest real growth and a steady exchange rate, but vulnerable if deflation persists or the renminbi weakens. And the headline figure says little about jobs, incomes, or productivity.
A political fixation on GDP invites engineering the path as much as producing the output. The smoother the series, the rougher the reality it likely conceals.
This past week, Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna visited his counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing. During the first in a decade visit, Tsahkna reaffirmed Estonia’s, and the EU’s stance that China should use its influence to help end the Russian aggression to Ukraine. Despite the new start for a diplomatic dialogue, China’s imports from Estonia have remained stable over the past decade.
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