China's private businesses remained at the forefront of the country's foreign trade in the first half of 2025, registering growth in total imports and exports for 21 consecutive quarters as of the end of June, a senior official with the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said on Monday.
Wang Lingjun, deputy head of the GAC, made the statement at a press conference in Beijing in elaborating on the robust performance of China's privately-owned foreign trade firms in the first six months.
"In the first half of the year, the imports and exports operated by China's private businesses totaled 12.48 trillion yuan (about 1.74 trillion U.S. dollars), up 7.3 percent year over year. Their share in China's overall foreign trade reached 57.3 percent, 2.3 percentage points higher compared with the same period of last year. Their exports and imports both expanded in the six-month period," Wang said.
China's foreign trade grew by 2.9 percent year on year to 21.79 trillion yuan (3.04 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first half of 2025, according to data released by the GAC.
In addition to their continued lead in foreign trade, China's private firms also sustained their strong innovation capabilities and overall high-quality development in the January-June period, the official said.
"As of the end of the second quarter of this year, the imports and exports operated by China's private businesses had grown year-on-year for 21 consecutive quarters, maintaining their lead in growth rate. So far this year in particular, the private businesses in the country have overcome the adverse effects resulting from the external environment, with the scale of their imports and exports exceeding 12 trillion yuan (1.67 trillion U.S. dollars) for the first time -- a record high -- and a growth rate 4.4 percentage points higher than the national average in the first half of the year," Wang said.
"In the first half of the year, of the 'little giant' enterprises in the country that apply special, sophisticated techniques to produce unique and novel products with solid foreign trade achievements, 80 percent were foreign-funded enterprises. In the six-month period, private businesses' exports of high-tech products rose 12.5 percent. In the same period, private firms actively promoted equipment upgrades, maintaining a sound growth rate in the imports of petrochemical, electronic, and other high-end products," he continued.
"In the first six months, private businesses accounted for half of China's overall output of equipment manufacturing products, with a double-digit growth rate registered in the export of ships, automobiles, special equipment and other products that represent the manufacturing hard power of China. More and more private businesses have been growing amid the ups and downs of the international market. In the first half of the year, 218 of the top 500 foreign trade enterprises in China were privately owned," he said.
The official also said that the GAC will continue to implement the various government policies aimed at promoting high-quality development of the private sector of the economy by enhancing services in areas such as customs clearance, inspection and quarantine, law enforcement, and protection of private businesses' legitimate rights and interests.
Private firms post 21 straight quarters of foreign-trade growth: customs data
