en.Wedoany.com Reported - At a State Council Information Office press conference on April 14, 2026, Wang Jun, Deputy Director General of the General Administration of Customs, reported that China's combined exports of key electronic components such as storage parts and central processing units grew by 39.1% in the first quarter. Exports of power-related products including power generation equipment, power transmission and transformation equipment, and energy storage equipment also achieved double-digit growth. Steady expansion of domestic demand in China drove synchronized growth in import volume, with the structure continuously optimized. China's imports of high-tech products grew by 25.1%, while imports of bulk commodities and consumer goods maintained good growth rates.
According to statistics from the General Administration of Customs, China's total import and export value of goods trade in the first quarter of 2026 was 11.84 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15%. Exports reached 6.85 trillion yuan, growing by 11.9%; imports reached 4.99 trillion yuan, growing by 19.6%. China's import and export scale exceeded 11 trillion yuan for the first time in the same historical period, with the quarterly growth rate being the highest in nearly five years. Wang Jun pointed out that China's total import and export value has remained above 10 trillion yuan for 12 consecutive quarters, and the growth rate has returned to double digits since the fourth quarter of 2022.
New drivers of China's exports continue to gain momentum. In the first quarter, China's exports of mechanical and electrical products reached 4.34 trillion yuan, growing by 18.3%, accounting for 63.4% of the total export value, an increase of 3.5 percentage points compared to the same period last year. Among them, exports of electric vehicles grew by 77.5%, exports of lithium batteries grew by 50.4%, and exports of wind power generating units and their parts grew by 45.2%. At the press conference, Lü Daliang, spokesperson for the General Administration of Customs and Director of the Department of Statistics and Analysis, stated that factors such as recovering external demand, China's complete industrial supporting system, and enterprises' proactive efforts to stabilize orders and expand markets jointly contributed to the double-digit growth in exports.
Diversification of China's foreign trade markets has been further consolidated and expanded. In the first quarter, China's import and export value with countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative reached 6.06 trillion yuan, growing by 14.2%, accounting for 51.2% of China's total import and export value. China's imports and exports with ASEAN and Latin America both grew by 15.4%, with Africa growing by 23.7%, with the EU and the UK growing by 14.6% and 13.1% respectively, and with other APEC economies growing by 13.4%.
China's import scale grew due to the expansion of domestic demand. In the first quarter, China imported 1.97 trillion yuan worth of mechanical and electrical products, growing by 21.7%. Imports of energy products reached 291 million tons, an increase of 4.4%; imports of metal ores and concentrates reached 405 million tons, an increase of 13.2%. Imports of consumer goods reached 418.92 billion yuan, growing by 5.4%. Wang Jun stated that China is proactively opening its ultra-large-scale market, actively expanding imports, and strengthening win-win industrial cooperation.
All types of business entities in China achieved comprehensive growth. In the first quarter, import and export by China's private enterprises reached 6.78 trillion yuan, growing by 16.2%, accounting for 57.3% of China's total import and export value. There were 618,000 enterprises in China with import and export records, of which over 540,000 were private enterprises. Import and export by foreign-invested enterprises reached 3.47 trillion yuan, growing by 16.1%; import and export by state-owned enterprises reached 1.56 trillion yuan, growing by 8%. Foreign trade import and export in central and western China reached 2.21 trillion yuan, and cross-border e-commerce import and export reached 618.46 billion yuan.
The General Administration of Customs pointed out that although China achieved relatively rapid growth in imports and exports in the first quarter, there are still many external uncertainties and unstable factors, and the impact of international geopolitical conflicts on global industrial and supply chains continues to evolve in a complex manner. In the next stage, China will continue to promote stable scale and optimized structure in foreign trade, and foster high-level opening up.
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