Official figures released Tuesday show China’s trade surplus has climbed past $1 trillion for the second year running, even as calls grow for more balanced trade with Beijing.
According to the customs agency, October exports were up 35.2% on the same month a year earlier. Shipments have expanded quickly throughout the year, helped by strong demand for high-tech products such as chips and cars. Imports also rose sharply, gaining 41.6% year-on-year.
Across the first ten months of the year, China racked up a trade surplus of $1.04 trillion. In October alone, the surplus shrank to $105.3 billion from $133.5 billion in September, as imports gathered speed.
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At this pace, China is set to beat the record $1.2 trillion surplus it posted last year by the end of 2026.
Moody’s Analytics economist Dave Chia expects exports to remain robust through the rest of the year, with electronics and autos leading the way. Meanwhile, the jump in October imports was due in part to crude oil shipments from the Persian Gulf bouncing back.
Natixis chief Asia Pacific economist Alicia García-Herrero says China keeps pushing its goods overseas because of excess capacity in numerous industries, high domestic savings, and sluggish demand at home, even as some countries take steps to shield their own industries. She argues this pattern can’t continue indefinitely.
The strain is showing among Chinese businesses, which face fierce competition amid the country’s economic slowdown. Cinders Zhou, who sells eyewear for a manufacturer in Linhai, in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, says the root issue is declining product quality across the sector, since so many products have become near-identical. Her company makes frames and lenses for both domestic and foreign buyers, and she says this sameness has left everyone competing mainly on price.
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Chia warns that European Union trade restrictions are a significant risk, particularly with U.S. tariffs and trade barriers already elevated. Nguyen Hoang Nam of Capital Economics counters that the EU’s measures cover only a small share of what China sells abroad.
Beijing maintains that it isn’t trying to widen its surplus and instead wants more balanced global trade. Even so, robust exports have cushioned the effect of weak consumer demand at home. Forecasts suggest the economy will hit the government’s growth goal of 4.5% to 5% this year, a touch below the 5% growth recorded last year.
In October, Chinese exports to the U.S. climbed 32.9% from a year earlier, though that comes off a depressed base after Trump’s steep tariffs disrupted trade between the two countries last year. Shipments to the EU grew 24.3% over the same period and 17.2% across January through October.
Over those first ten months, China’s trade surplus with the U.S. came to roughly $266.5 billion, while its surplus with the EU topped $310 billion. For all of 2025, the EU ran a trade deficit with China of about $410 billion, which works out to over $1.1 billion per day.
China’s chip exports in October more than doubled in value, jumping 137.1% from a year earlier, while auto exports gained 37.6%.
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The country’s export strength could be exposed if the artificial intelligence industry hits a rough patch, a worry that grew after Democratic wins in the U.S. midterms, since voters have shown public resistance to building more data centers.
Chia cautions that if the AI boom cools or corrects, falling chip and electronics prices, along with reduced shipping volumes, would deal a heavy blow to Chinese exports.
Trade is expected to rank high on the agenda when President Trump and Xi Jinping meet next week, in talks planned on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the tech hub of Shenzhen.
A two-month extension of the trade truce, now running into January, has given exporters some breathing room, though how long that relief will hold is uncertain.
Wang Xin, who leads the Shenzhen Cross-Border E-Commerce Association, an industry group, says U.S. and European trade policies have created many obstacles for Chinese companies trying to grow in those markets.
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