China’s Trade Surplus Reaches a Record of $1 Trillion in 11 Months

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Dec 9, 2025 - 11:00 Updated: Dec 9, 2025 - 10:52
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China’s Trade Surplus Reaches a Record of $1 Trillion in 11 Months

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China’s trade surplus has topped $1 trillion as of November, breaking the full-year record set in 2024, as an outpouring of cheap products floods the global markets amid sluggish demand at home.

Overall sales abroad surged by 5.9 percent in November in U.S. dollar terms compared with the same month last year, according to data released by the Chinese regime’s General Administration of Customs on Dec. 8. It bounced back from a 1.1 percent decline in the previous month—the first drop recorded this year—and beat economists’ projections in a Reuters poll of 3.8 percent growth.
Imports rose by 1.9 percent year over year to $218.7 billion. Although the figure was an improvement from October’s 1 percent gain, it still fell short of the median estimate of 3 percent growth in Reuters’s survey.

As a result, China recorded a trade surplus of $111.7 billion in November, compared with $90.1 billion in October.

In the first 11 months of this year, China’s trade surplus surpassed $1.1 trillion, up by 21.6 percent from the same period last year. In 2024, China’s trade surplus stood at a record $992.1 billion.

The robust growth in exports, along with the resulting trade deficit, has raised concerns among other economies as foreign policymakers worry about job losses and factory closures in sectors flooded with low-priced Chinese products.

The European Union’s trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, has warned that China’s rise “must not come at the expense of the European economy,” while U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed additional tariffs on Chinese imports to narrow the massive trade deficit.

Surges in Exports to Non-US Markets

Although Beijing and Washington reached a tentative trade truce following a summit between the two countries’ leaders at the end of October, China’s exports to the United States have continued the downward trend, plunging by 28.6 percent in November from a year earlier—the eighth consecutive month of decline.
“The tariff cuts agreed under the US-China trade truce didn’t help to lift shipments to the US last month, but overall export growth rebounded nonetheless,” Huang Zichun of Capital Economics wrote in a note on Dec. 8.

“We think China’s exports will remain resilient, with the country continuing to gain global market share next year.”

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In contrast to the shrinking sales to the United States, China’s exports to Africa, Latin America, and Australia saw a double-digit increase last month, while export growth to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China’s biggest trading partners, slowed to 8.2 percent.

Shipments to the EU grew by 14.8 percent, with France taking in 17.5 percent more Chinese goods.

The data came just days after French President Emmanuel Macron urged China to boost domestic demand and address the massive trade gap during a visit to China last week.
“I told them that, if they did not respond, we, Europeans, would be forced, in the coming months, to take strong measures and to decouple, like the United States, such as customs duties on Chinese products,” Macron said in an interview with local newspaper Les Echos, published on Dec. 7. Macron indicated that he had discussed this issue with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
According to China’s latest customs data, the trade surplus with the EU reached $266.8 billion in the January to November period, up by nearly 20 percent from $223.1 billion recorded in the same period last year.

Weak Domestic Demand

Despite concerns from China’s trading partners, Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING, said strong exports could help Beijing to achieve this year’s growth target of “around 5 percent.”

However, he highlighted the need to roll out more stimulus to boost domestic demand, which remains weak amid a property crisis.

“China’s pivot to establishing domestic demand as a key driver of growth will take time, but it’s essential for China to move into the next phase in its economic development,” Song said in a note on Dec. 8. “Ultimately, we need to see what concrete measures are put in place to boost domestic consumption next year.”

The top decision-making body of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Politburo, reiterated its plan to boost demand at home at a Dec. 8 meeting chaired by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to a summary of the meeting released by state media.

Senior CCP officials, regional authorities, and representatives from state-owned enterprises are set to gather in Beijing at the end of this month for the Central Economic Work Conference, which typically offers more specific policy priorities and key economic growth targets for the year ahead.

Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University, has cautioned that it would be challenging to encourage Chinese families to spend more.

With the property market in a persistent meltdown—a sector that he said accounts for 80 percent of Chinese family wealth—many people are likely to keep a tight grip on their wallets, according to Rogoff, who served as the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist from 2001 to 2003.

Compounding the issue is the lack of a comprehensive pension and health care system in the communist country. When families have to save for their health care, “it’s very hard to get people to build consumption,” Rogoff said in a recent interview with The Epoch Times.

According to his prediction, China’s economic growth could slow by 2 percent to 3 percent in the years ahead, although he noted that the slowdown may not be reflected in official statistics from the Chinese regime.

The veracity of China’s economic statistics has long been questioned, largely because of the CCP’s record of concealing and manipulating data deemed harmful to its image.

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