中文
By Maya Majueran
Lead: China's 2025 trade figures reveal deepening cooperation with the Global South, with a new architecture grounded in local currencies and green technology now accounting for more than half its foreign commerce.
China's 2025 trade figures reveal more than resilient growth; they point to a strategic reorientation of the country's economic relationships and export profile. This shift reflects a move away from traditional dependencies and toward a more diversified, future-oriented trade architecture.
Geographically, as a response to Western trade pressure and harsh global reality, China is diversifying by deepening integration with the Global South. ASEAN has consolidated its position as China's largest trading partner, while trade with the Middle East, Africa and Latin America continues to accelerate. Trade with Russia has also been fundamentally restructured, with Chinese goods filling gaps left by Western withdrawals and settlements increasingly conducted in local currencies, reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar. At the heart of this new trade phase is a decisive upgrade in export composition. China is moving beyond basic manufactured goods toward high-value strategic sectors that will drive high-quality growth across the globe in the 21st century.
The "new trio" — electric vehicles, lithium batteries and photovoltaic products — clearly illustrate this transformation. Shaped by sustained industrial policy and aligned with global climate imperatives, these industries have made Chinese manufacturing both more affordable and cleaner. That such breakthroughs emerged despite Western sanctions underscores China's industrial resilience and the competitive advantages of its vast domestic market.
Advances in 5G infrastructure, open-source artificial intelligence and smartphones further demonstrate China's ascent up the global value chain. Together, these developments position China not merely as a manufacturer but as an indispensable supplier for the global green transition. They also position the country as a critical development partner, redefining its role from a low-end assembler to a technological leader and systems provider.
This trade reorientation is accompanied by a quieter but consequential financial shift. The yuan is moving from symbolic use to practical application in cross-border trade settlements, particularly in commodities. Currency swap lines, yuan-denominated financing, zero-tariff initiatives for least-developed countries and expanded access to China's domestic market collectively support this transition.
Chinese workers are pictured at the inauguration ceremony for the upgrade project of the Caspian Asphalt Plant in Aktau, Kazakhstan, on May 5.This expansion will ease Kazakhstan's shortage of road asphalt for infrastructure development. [Photo/Xinhua]
Beyond goods, "invisible" trade in digital services is expanding rapidly, while cross-border e-commerce is creating new entry points for foreign firms. At the same time, rising consumer goods imports signal China's intent to use domestic demand as a stabilizing force for its trading partners.
Recent policy measures, including expanded visa-free transit, improved duty-free shopping, simplified tax refund systems, the integration of international cards with domestic mobile payment platforms and the rollout of English-language map services, are both timely and strategically significant. By reducing obstacles for foreign visitors and consumers, these steps support consumption while reinforcing economic resilience. They highlight China's broader shift toward consumption-led growth.
While Western commentary often focuses on China’s trade tensions with advanced economies, the more consequential story is unfolding elsewhere: in the deepening and institutionalization of China's trade relationships with the Global South. This pivot is a pragmatic and multidimensional arrangement aimed at building a new trade paradigm, one grounded in local currencies, mutual development and shared economic interests.
The data is telling. Trade with Belt and Road Initiative partners now accounts for 51.9% of China's total foreign trade and is growing at 6.3%, outpacing the overall average. Exports to ASEAN, Africa and Latin America are surging, with African imports into China rising 18.4%. China is now the largest trading partner of more than 160 countries, a sharp increase from just five years ago.
This geographical diversification serves as a deliberate buffer against protectionism and volatility in traditional Western markets. As some Western economies pursue decoupling and impose export controls on strategic goods, China's trade ecosystem is steadily reducing its relative dependence on those same markets.
Crucially, this South-South reorientation is underpinned by a framework that emphasizes mutual benefit, collective development, respect for national sovereignty, and greater financial autonomy. For many emerging and developing economies, engagement with China offers an alternative to trade and investment models often conditioned on political alignment or policy prescriptions. Instead, cooperation with China prioritizes infrastructure development, industrial upgrading and access to affordable technology while preserving domestic policy space.
This approach enhances resilience and reduces exposure to external shocks by shifting financial arrangements away from aid dependency and toward local currencies, development finance and market-driven demand. Trading in yuan or local currencies across Asia, Africa and Latin America lowers transaction costs, mitigates exposure to foreign monetary tightening and shields bilateral trade from external financial volatility.
For China, this process advances the internationalization of the yuan through market-based mechanisms. For partner economies, it reduces dollar dependence, eases pressure on foreign exchange reserves and strengthens monetary policy autonomy. These factors collectively reinforce the durability of these expanding trade ties.
China's exports in green and industrial technologies lower the cost of both industrialization and decarbonization, allowing partner countries to pursue growth without locking themselves into carbon-intensive development paths. Meanwhile, China's expanding imports from developing economies provide a reliable and sizable market. The implementation of 100% zero-tariff treatment for least-developed countries has already boosted imports from these nations by 9%.
By linking infrastructure, production and markets, China is helping Global South economies move from peripheral participation toward deeper integration into global trade networks. This approach extends beyond bilateral relationships, contributing to the emergence of a more multipolar and interconnected economic landscape among developing economies.
China's trade pivot is thus a defining feature of 21st-century global economics. It represents a pragmatic response to Western containment efforts, transforming external pressure into momentum for building alternative and resilient networks. By anchoring its trade future in the Global South, expanding local currency settlements and emphasizing mutual development through technology and market access, China is actively shaping a different model of globalization, which contributes to the building of a global community with a shared future.
Whether the West will be glad to see further success of this model, which helps produce a more stable and equitable global system for all nations, remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is that the geography of global trade is being redrawn, and its new centers of gravity increasingly lie in the world's emerging economies.
Maya Majueran is the founding director of Belt and Road Initiative Sri Lanka, an organization dedicated to research and dialogue on the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. He is also a researcher and commentator on international relations, economics and geopolitics, focusing on Asia and the Global South's evolving role in world affairs.
