China's trade has forged ahead despite international uncertainty. In 2025, China's exports grew by 6.1 percent year-on-year to 26.99 trillion yuan ($3.91 trillion), while imports reached a record high of 18.48 trillion yuan, representing 0.5 percent annual growth. Western media frequently laments China's $1.2 trillion trade surplus and claims that China makes international trade "impossible" — yet this narrative conveniently ignores the fact that China has been the world's second-largest importer for 17 consecutive years.

The Chinese leadership has made import promotion a clear policy priority. The Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development emphasize modernizing and upgrading goods trade, promoting green and intermediate goods trade, and aiming for a balanced growth in imports and exports. At the 2026 Davos Summit, Vice-Premier He Lifeng reiterated this commitment, highlighting efforts to leverage China's vast market, expand imports, and enhance industrial cooperation to share opportunities with other countries.

Import promotion serves China's dual interests: elevating living standards by providing consumers with higher-quality goods and services, and fostering mutually beneficial trading relationships around the world.

Looking ahead to 2026, a range of concrete policies and programs to promote imports are already being rolled out.

The first lever is tariff reduction. China will continue lowering tariff rates on goods entering the country, with 935 product categories subject to provisional import tariffs below most-favored-nation rates. China will also maintain zero-tariff treatment for 53 African countries with which it has established diplomatic relations, and continue to provide preferential treatment to 34 countries or regions, under 24 free trade agreements (FTAs).

The second lever is market coordination and trade promotion. The Ministry of Commerce has outlined plans to foster coordination among diverse market players and improve online-offline connectivity to raise the quality and efficiency of imports. It hosted a major import promotion event — "Big Market for All: Export to China" — in Beijing in early 2026; and plans to host over 100 similar events throughout the year to support a wider range of high-quality global goods and services entering the Chinese market. The annual China International Import Expo, now in its ninth iteration, will continue to serve as a prominent platform for introducing quality imports to China.

The third lever is consumer incentives. The Department of Foreign Trade at the Ministry of Commerce has committed to implementing consumption-boosting programs such as "Premium Consumption Month" and "International Consumption Season" to bring more high-quality imported products and services into the Chinese market and strengthen their performance there.

The fourth lever is the promotion of industrial and intermediate goods imports. As China pursues a green transition and economic digitalization, it will support the import of low-carbon products and leverage cross-border e-commerce pilot zones to integrate industrial clusters. China's rising energy demands — driven by industrial production — are also expected to boost LNG imports to roughly 70.5 to 75.5 million metric tons.

Beyond import-specific policies, Chinese policymakers are also implementing broader measures to promote employment, raise incomes, stabilize consumer expectations, and strengthen the social safety net. These efforts will not only enhance domestic consumer demand but also translate into greater appetite for imported goods and services. Chinese consumer preferences are also shifting: brand prestige matters less, while quality, value, health, safety, and user experience weigh more. This positions high-tech products and components, medical equipment, premium agricultural products, and fashion and lifestyle brands for strong demand growth — as do pharmaceutical products. The services sector presents a particularly compelling opportunity: trade in services grew at 4.5 times the rate of goods trade in 2025, and tourism, education, health services, and business and financial services all stand to see sustained medium — and long-term growth. How foreign businesses can effectively scale up their service exports to China remains both an important opportunity and a critical challenge.

Two additional structural factors are driving China's import growth. First, China's efforts to enhance trade connectivity — most notably through the Belt and Road Initiative — are opening new corridors for commerce. Since the completion of the Chancay port in Chile, one of the BRI's flagship projects, China's trade with Peru, Ecuador, and Chile has grown significantly between 2024 and 2025. By deepening physical and digital connectivity with trading partners — especially those in the Global South — China is expanding the flows of trade in both directions and creating new opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation.

Second, the Chinese renminbi strengthened against the US dollar in 2025 and is poised to strengthen further in 2026. A stronger currency enhances China's purchasing power relative to foreign goods, providing a natural incentive to import more.

In a nutshell, China's industrial expansion, rising consumer demand, favorable trade policies, enhanced connectivity, and an appreciating currency collectively position it to accelerate import growth in the years ahead. This represents a significant opportunity for countries seeking to access China's expanding market. To fully capitalize on it, however, those countries must be willing to remove self-imposed trade barriers and uphold open trade principles. As Vice-Premier He Lifeng observed at Davos: "We never seek trade surplus; on top of being the world's factory, we hope to be the world's market too. However, in many cases, when China wants to buy, others don't want to sell. Trade issues often become security hurdles." To facilitate open trade, countries should ease export controls on civilian technology and agricultural goods, and engage constructively in bilateral and multilateral trade dialogues rather than retreating into protectionism.

Countries should also consider waiving or streamlining visa requirements to facilitate the flow of tourists, students, and business travelers into China — a straightforward step that could meaningfully boost trade in services. Countries that position themselves as open, reliable partners will be best placed to capture the growing demand flowing from China's market.

China's trajectory as a global importer is not a geopolitical concession but a reflection of its economic maturation: a rising middle class with evolving tastes, an industry hungry for inputs and energy, and a government that has staked its credibility on balanced and open trade. The question is not whether China's import market will grow, but which countries will have the foresight to engage with it.

Those who choose cooperation over suspicion, openness over restriction, and partnership over rivalry stand to gain enormously. The world does not have to choose between engaging China and protecting its own interests — in trade, the two are more often aligned than not.

The author is a Kremer chair professor of economics at Willamette University.

The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

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