China places great importance on economic, trade cooperation with Germany: commerce ministry

China stands ready to work with Germany to promote high-quality trade and economic development through concrete actions, said a spokesperson from the Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday.

The remarks came ahead of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's official visit to China from Feb 25 to 26 at the invitation of Chinese Premier Li Qiang.

The spokesperson said bilateral economic and trade cooperation has deepening steadily over the past 50 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Germany has long been China's largest trading partner and largest source of foreign investment in Europe, with the two countries' industries deeply integrated, and the foundation for their cooperation continuously cemented.

In recent years, annual bilateral trade has remained above 200 billion U.S. dollars, and two-way investment stock has exceeded 65 billion U.S. dollars, with each figure accounting for nearly one quarter of China's total engagement with the European Union (EU).

During the visit, Merz is expected to lead a high-level business delegation to China, accompanied by senior executives from around 30 leading German companies in key sectors such as automobiles, chemicals, biopharmaceuticals, machinery manufacturing and the circular economy, reflecting Germany's strong willingness to deepen bilateral economic and trade cooperation, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said that China attaches great importance to economic and trade cooperation with Germany and is working closely with the German side to prepare events such as the China-Germany economic advisory committee meeting, to build platforms for enterprises to exchange views and explore new cooperation potential.

Noting that 2026 marks the start of China's 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), the spokesperson said China welcomes German companies to seize new opportunities brought by China's high-standard opening-up, consolidate cooperation in traditional sectors, and further tap the potential for cooperation in emerging fields, including clean energy, embodied intelligence, biotechnology and industrial digitalization, to achieve tangible outcomes.

China is ready to work with Germany to improve mutual trust and understanding through dialogue and communication, support free trade, uphold a rules-based multilateral trading system, and promote high-quality development of China-Germany trade and economic cooperation through concrete actions, so that it can better serve as the ballast and stabilizer of China-Germany and China-EU relations, according to the spokesperson.

China places great importance on economic, trade cooperation with Germany: commerce ministry

Chinese stocks closed higher on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the broad tariffs implemented by the Trump administration last year, putting China among the countries set to face lower levies on exports to the U.S., reported Timothy Pope, a market analyst for China Global Television Network (CGTN).

Tuesday marks the first trading day after China's nine-day Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, holiday.

"The markets did pretty well. Galloping into the Year of the Horse, the Shanghai Composite Index was up more than 1.2 percent at one stage. It's did moderate those gains a little by the end of the session, closing 0.9 percent higher," said Pope.

In addition to the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, the Shenzhen Component Index closed 1.36 percent higher at 14,291.57 points.

The analyst attributed the increases largely to the U.S. Supreme Court's tariff ruling, which said on Feb 20 that U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping levies under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) meant for use in national emergencies were illegal.

"While pretty much everything in China stops for the Spring Festival, the rest of the world didn't. We had that U.S. supreme court ruling on Donald Trump's tariffs being effectively illegal, following which, of course, he threw his toys out of the pram and found a new way to put tariffs on the whole world for 150 days. I guess it wouldn't be another year of the Trump presidency without added tariff drama. But all the analysis I've seen so far seems to agree that this could be a good thing for China -- that the effective rate of tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S. will go down as a result. That certainly seemed to be the market consensus today. We saw a lot of export-facing industries gaining ground. Consumer electronics stocks had been up by more than two percent around the lunchtime break. They closed about one and quarter percent higher -- so some quite strong performances there," Pope said.

Chinese stocks rise amid export optimism