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Chinese exports jumped 36.3% in dollar terms last month from a year earlier, underscoring the country’s growing reliance on trade for economic growth and escalating tensions with important partners such as the EU.
The country’s export growth in September exceeded the previous month’s figure of 25 percent and the median forecast of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg of 25.7 percent, as shipments of AI-related electronics boomed.
This is the largest increase since January-February 2021, when China reported a 60.2% increase in exports during the Covid pandemic. China reports January and February figures together due to the Lunar New Year holiday.
Strong export growth produced a trade surplus of $938.1 billion for the first nine months of this year, up from $875.1 billion during the same period in 2025, putting China on track to surpass last year’s annual record of $1.2 billion.
China’s soaring exports have stoked tensions with trading partners, who fear that low-cost Chinese goods flooding their markets could displace domestic industries and lead to job losses.
China’s dollar-denominated imports, meanwhile, rose 31 percent year-on-year in September, according to official data from China’s General Administration of Customs released Wednesday, compared with a 28.2 percent rise the previous month and analyst forecasts of 25 percent. Rising oil prices have pushed up the Chinese import bill.
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FT calculations showed that the two categories of AI-related products – chips and automatic data processing machines and components – accounted for 17.9 percent of China’s total exports in September, contributing 13 percentage points to export growth, up from 11.3 percentage points in August.
The release of the data follows an agreement last week between Beijing and Brussels to impose a quota on imports of Chinese hybrid vehicles. China’s trade surplus with the EU reached almost 1 billion euros per day in 2025 and has been growing since. Vehicles and machinery were the main contributors to the surplus.
The figures also highlight China’s growing reliance on exports to offset a domestic economy that is suffering from weak demand following a prolonged real estate downturn.
China’s economy grew 4.3 percent in the second quarter, one of its weakest quarterly growth rates in decades and below the lower end of its full-year target range of 4.5 to 5 percent. The country is expected to report economic growth for the third quarter on Monday.
Wang Jun, deputy commissioner of the General Administration of Customs, said Chinese trade “provided a powerful boost to global trade and economic growth” in the first nine months.
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The international environment is challenging as “geopolitical conflicts continue to disrupt the global economic and trade order, while trade protectionism and unilateralism are on the rise,” he said.
But the global economy is resilient, Wang added, predicting that China’s trade would “maintain steady growth.”
The exceptional commercial performance contrasts with the more gloomy conditions of the national economy.
The National Bureau of Statistics reported on Wednesday that the consumer price index rose 0.9 percent in September, compared with 0.8 percent in August. Producer prices rose 5 percent, compared to 3.8 percent the previous month.
The increases, particularly in ex-factory prices, are due to rising energy and fossil fuel costs due to the Middle East crisis, analysts say, rather than a sharp rise in domestic demand.
Goldman Sachs had predicted before the release of the figures that rising oil prices would lead to a rise in the CPI while rising commodity prices would lead to an increase in the PPI.
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