China's export scale exceeded 13 trillion yuan (about 1.81 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first half of this year, the highest level for the same period in history, as the country's foreign trade companies keep making efforts to expand their business in an increasingly volatile international market.
Notably, the private companies played a major role in boosting the trade growth, with their import and export scale surpassing 12 trillion yuan for the first time in the first six months also in comparison with the same period in history.
The growing trade partnership have also been keeping China's international shipping industry busy.
At Yantian Port in the country's southern city of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, bustling operations have become common. All the port's 20 berths are often occupied by massive container vessels with a single one of them being able to carry nearly 30,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers to destinations around the world.
"We added 11 new international shipping routes in the first half of this year, including one express route launched in June," said Pang Ning, deputy general manager of the commercial department at Hutchison Ports YANTIAN.
Yantian Port stands as an example of China's efforts to facilitate trade by improving its transportation network.
In the first half of this year, 11 international hub ports in China added over 72 shipping routes. Additionally, China’s trade with over 190 countries and regions recorded growth and the number of the country's trading partners with trade volumes exceeding 50 billion yuan reached 61, five more than in the same period last year.
While trade with markets like the European Union, Japan, and the UK continued to grow, emerging markets also made significant contributions to the growth. In the first six months of this year, China's trade with Africa totaled 1.18 trillion yuan, up 14.4 percent, and its trade with Central Asia increased by 13.8 percent to over 357 billion yuan.
A noticeable contributor of the growing trade is China's private enterprises, which have emerged as the backbone of the country's export growth through innovation and industrial upgrades.
In the first half of this year, over 80 percent of "little giant" enterprises that apply special, sophisticated techniques to produce unique and novel products and also had international trade performance were privately owned, and their high-tech exports increased by 12.5 percent.
The high-tech driven business growth has been helping Chinese companies attracting international customers.
In central China's Henan Province, a private company secured a 20-million-yuan international order for its independently developed electronic glass fiber yarn.
"A total of 189 fibers together equal the width of one human hair. These electronic materials, which are extracted from minerals, have now been exported to companies in Japan and South Korea, marking our full entry into the industrial and supply chains of the world's leading electronic material industry," Zhao Wuquan, head of the administration department at Henan Guangyuan New Material Company Limited.
China's exports exceed 13 tln yuan in first six months of 2025, setting new record
