This aerial drone photo taken on July 10, 2025 shows a view of Longtan Container Terminal of Nanjing Port in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Photo by Yang Suping/Xinhua)
BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- China's total foreign goods trade reached 21.79 trillion yuan in the first half of 2025, up 2.9 percent year on year.
These figures highlight the resilience of China's foreign trade. Faced with multiple challenges, foreign trade enterprises have remained agile, pursuing innovation, exploring international markets, and fueling high-quality and innovation-driven export growth.
-- Tapping into new markets and expanding global circle of friends
FMWORLD Agricultural Machinery, a leading farming machine manufacturer based in east China's Jiangsu Province, tailored its products to meet varying market demands and saw its overseas sales exceeding 1.25 billion yuan from January to May this year, with a year-on-year increase of 34 percent.
The company entered the palm harvesting sector last year and developed a palm fruit collection and transport machine tailored for Southeast Asian plantations, gaining strong market recognition, said a representative of the company, adding that the company will explore new markets in Venezuela, Panama, Iraq, and Kazakhstan this year.
Wang Shanhua, president of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Jiangsu Sub-council, noted that Jiangsu is continuously diversifying its trade channels, with a focus on the Middle East, Central Asia, member countries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and Africa.
Customs statistics showed that China's trade with over 190 countries and regions achieved growth in the first half of 2025, and the number of trading partners with bilateral trade volumes exceeding 50 billion yuan reached 61.
-- Exploring new forms of business with cross-border e-commerce boom
Hangzhou's cross-border e-commerce exports reached 38.74 billion yuan in the first half of 2025, marking a year-on-year increase of 37.9 percent, according to statistics from Hangzhou Customs.
Hangzhou Lingban Technology Ltd., a company specialized in human-computer interaction technologies, said that it launched the cross-border e-commerce export business at the beginning of this year and has been continuously expanding into overseas markets including Europe, the U.S., and Southeast Asia. Currently, its cross-border e-commerce export sales have exceeded 10 million yuan.
Recently, a batch of Chinese-style painted oil-paper umbrellas produced by Hangzhou Anruosu Technology Co., Ltd. were exported to Europe via cross-border e-commerce retail platforms, with an average monthly sales volume of about 5,000 units.
As a main form of foreign trade, cross-border e-commerce enables domestic companies to connect directly with global consumers, providing more and more foreign trade enterprises with effective channels to participate in international competition.
China's cross-border e-commerce trade amounted to approximately 1.32 trillion yuan in the first half of 2025, up 5.7 percent year on year, according to customs statistics.
-- Deepening technological innovation for higher-quality export
With China's manufacturers stepping up their R&D efforts, more and more innovative products are entering into global markets.
Guangzhou Xinwei Bicycle Manufacturing Co., Ltd. has an annual production capacity of 80,000 electric bicycles. The company's exports of lithium battery mountain bikes and other products to Europe totaled nearly 28 million yuan in the first half of 2025, a year-on-year increase of 35.6 percent, said Hou Dezhi, the company's general manager.
In Shunde, Foshan City of south China's Guangdong Province, an average of 600 containers filled with home appliances are shipped to overseas markets every day from Beijiao Port.
According to Li Huihua, customs affairs director of Midea Group, in response to the high demands of the EU market for energy efficiency and intelligence, the company has launched a wind-free air conditioner, which can automatically sense the position of the human body and adjust the wind direction, and is highly favored by overseas customers.
With strong policy support, foreign trade enterprises are effectively tackling external challenges through various means such as overseas shipments, market diversification, and R&D innovation, stated Gao Shiwang, spokesperson for the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products.
China's export of electromechanical products reached 7.8 trillion yuan in the first half of 2025, a year-on-year increase of 9.5 percent. Among these, high-end equipment closely linked to new quality productive forces grew by more than 20 percent, and exports of China's "new three," namely electric vehicles, lithium batteries and photovoltaic products, rose by 12.7 percent.
(Edited by Yang Linlin with Xinhua Silk Road, linlinyanglyn@163.com)
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