Chapter 22 on trade in China’s XV Five-Year Plan is not a blueprint for liberal rebalancing. It is a blueprint for managed openness. Imports matter, but mainly where they serve technological upgrading and supply security. Exports remain central, supported by market diversification, digital channels, financial backing, and stronger state tools to manage friction, including export controls. The chapter assumes a harsher external environment, especially with advanced economies, and answers not with retreat but with a more strategic, more defended, and more selective form of global integration.
The 5-year plan talks about balancing imports and exports, but the external data still show exports pulling ahead. Identical claims were made in 2014 (Li Keqiang, Work Report).
The wording “推动进出口平衡发展” in the 5-year plan does not mean rebalancing in the Western sense. In this context it reads more like better coordination of the trade machine than a political commitment to shrink the surplus. The rest of the chapter confirms this: the import side is tied to advanced technology and equipment, high-quality agricultural products, and productive services that are urgently needed domestically. It is not about “importing more because consumers should consume more”; it is about “importing what China needs for upgrading and resilience.”
About trade in services: China is willing to open services only to the extent that this does not weaken Party-state control over politically sensitive systems.
Germany dominates China’s imports from the EU at 34.6%. That is more than the next two combined, France at 13.5% and Italy at 9.3%, or 22.8% together.
The top five suppliers, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Ireland, already account for about 72% of China’s EU imports. After the top tier, shares drop quickly. Spain is a notable outlier on the low side. Despite being the EU’s fourth-largest economy by GDP, after Germany, France and Italy, it accounts for only 3.5% of China’s imports from the EU, roughly one-third of Italy’s share.
Take this with a pinch of salt. The EU is a single market, so goods China records as exported to the Netherlands may in practice end up in Germany or elsewhere in the bloc.
The main channel is energy, not just shipping routes. If Hormuz is at risk, the immediate pressure falls on crude oil and petroleum gases, with the effects then spreading through global trade costs and hitting everyone, including the EU and China.
China’s crude oil suppliers
‘Gulf states’ is used in a loose sense (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain).
Where the EU sourced crude oil in 2025
China’s petroleum gas suppliers in 2025
Where the EU sourced petroleum gases in 2025
China is more exposed than the EU to Hormuz energy risk
Hormuz risk matters more for China than for the EU. If Gulf energy flows are disrupted, China is far more exposed through its import structure. The data show China relies heavily on the Gulf for energy imports, while the EU depends much more on the United States. Russia remains a secondary but still relevant supplier for both, especially for China.
For China’s NBS manufacturing PMI, the employment subindex measures whether surveyed firms are increasing, reducing, or keeping stable their workforce compared with the previous month. It is a diffusion index, so above 50 means more firms are adding staff than cutting, while below 50 means the opposite.
The XIV Five-Year Plan period (2021–25) coincided with China’s population peak and the start of the first sustained decline since the early 1960s. The plan acknowledged demographic headwinds and sketched out pro-family support measures. That raises the question of what the XV Five-Year Plan (2026–30) will say about demographics.
Qiushi, the Party’s main theoretical journal, signals a demographic pivot. It accepts that the numbers are turning down, and calls for a response centred on childcare and broader family support, ageing services and the ‘silver economy’, and labour-supply measures such as skills upgrades and gradual delayed retirement.
China population by age group
Based on NBS’s latest age breakdown, the headline is the shape of China’s population pyramid. The under-16 cohort is about 230 million, while the 65+ group is already almost as large at 224 million. Add those aged 60–64 and China has roughly 323 million people aged 60 and above, underscoring how quickly the population is shifting towards older age groups.
In 2025, SAFE’s foreign exchange reserves rose to $3.36tn, the highest level in the five-year span shown in our chart. This need not be read as a direct mirror of China’s very large goods surplus: the headline number also reflects exchange-rate and asset-price valuation, as well as other balance-of-payments flows. Also note that it refers only to foreign currency reserves and does not include gold, SDRs, the IMF reserve position, or other components of China’s official reserve assets.
