China’s export locomotive did not stop before the great Spanish symphony orchestrated around 2025 by American President Donald Trump. The Asian giant recorded an accumulated trade surplus worth $1 billion for the first time in the first 11 months of this year, according to figures released this month by the General Administration of Customs. In this way, Beijing managed to reach the billion dollar hit in the 12 months of 2024, and is then documented as the largest in history.
The whopping figure of $1,076 billion (around €923 billion) reflects how the planet’s second-largest economy has redoubled its commitment to exports to other markets, mainly Southeast Asia and Europe, as a strategy in the face of trade tensions with the United States. It comes just over a month after Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, agreed to a year-long truce following a high-altitude meeting in the southern city of Busán.
The Asian giant’s efforts to diversify its exports seem to be bearing fruit. Foreign sales of the Asian giant increased by 5.9% in November compared to the same month of the previous year, thus returning to positive rates after experiencing in October their first interannual decline (1.1%) since March 2024. In the cumulative result of the year, the increase was 5.4%, to 3.4 billion dollars (2.9 billion euros), despite the drop in shipments to the United States, which cost up to 18.9%.
Chinese sales saw the North American country suffer a further loss of 29% in November compared to the same month of 2024. And total bilateral trade, exceeding five billion dollars between imports and exports, suffered a cumulative loss of 17.7%.
Currently, US exports to China remain at 47.5%, while the Asian giant’s share of US products is 31.9%, according to calculations by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
At the same time, sales to the European Union increased by 14.8% year-on-year, thus offsetting the trade deficit that is so worrying for the European Union. Between this year and November, Chinese exports to the Community territory increased by 8.1%; On the contrary, despite repeated calls from European leaders for China to open its markets and rebalance the balance, the situation is getting worse, with a cumulative drop of 2.1% in imports of goods from the EU. The decline in Germany, the European exporting powerhouse, is even more pronounced, at 3.5%.
In total, China’s cumulative exports fell this year by 0.6%, totaling 2.33 billion dollars (around billions of euros). And the breach began to generate serious conflicts with different territories, alerted by the flow of available Chinese manufacturers.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who was on an official visit to China last week, said during his meeting with Xi that current imbalances are “becoming unsustainable.” “If we continue like this, a crisis will begin,” he assured, warning that a trade war “is the worst way to confront the situation.”
In any case, China’s economic record seems invariable. It continues its quest for expansion from overseas ports, with increasingly higher value-added products, while trying to achieve a slowdown in domestic consumption and a sustained jibarization of the real estate sector, which is entering its fifth year of frenzy. This results in a depreciation of the yuan against the dollar and the euro: another point which strengthens China’s competitiveness, according to analysts.
Tensions
China is in any case aware that pursuing this path could lead to excessive tensions with its trading partners. And calibrate your options. One of the central points of its next five-year plan, a sort of economic and social development guide for the Asian giant, unveiled in October, aims to restore consumer confidence and reactivate domestic spending.
Some analysts consider that the imbalance could force, in addition, the leaders of the communist country to open up and deepen the investments of their companies abroad, as a formula for producing locally, correcting imbalances and sharing technology.
The 2025 trade trend shows how the People’s Republic has intensified its close economic diplomacy, redirecting some of its production to surrounding countries. Economists interpret this gap in part as a sorting formula for American arancelar jobs: a kind of intermediate stop before the flow, which does not stop, reaches its final destination.
Exports to Southeast Asia rose 13.7% between last year and November, led by strong alumni: Thailand and Vietnam, which racked up increases of more than 20%. Conversely, imports from these neighboring countries fell by 1.2%.
“Financial cuts agreed under the U.S.-China trade truce did not contribute to an increase in shipments to the United States last month, but overall export growth has recovered,” said Zichun Huang, China economist at Capital Economics, according to statements collected by Reuters. “We hope that Chinese exports will remain resilient and the country will continue to gain global market share next year. » “The role of trade reorientation to offset the cost of American aranceles appears to continue to grow,” he added.
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