China’s trade surplus soared to $1.2 trillion (€1 trillion) in 2025, as increased sales to the European Union, Africa and southeast Asia made up for a drop in exports to the United States at the end of the year. Exports for December rose by 6.6 per cent compared to a year earlier, the biggest increase for three months.
Exports to the US dropped by 30 per cent in December, and by 20 per cent for the full year of 2025. Exports to Africa in 2025 grew by 26 per cent, to southeast Asia by 13 per cent, to the EU by 8 per cent and to Latin America by 7 per cent.
As China’s exports to the EU have grown, its imports from European countries have been shrinking, so that the trade surplus with the EU grew by 18 per cent in 2025. The shift in Germany was most pronounced, with China’s trade surplus growing by 108 per cent in 2025.
Total imports rose by just 0.5 per cent but Wang Jun, deputy head of China’s customs authority, blamed US and EU export controls on some technology for size of the trade gap.
“Some countries have politicised trade issues and limited high-tech exports to China; if they hadn’t, we would have imported more,” he said.
The latest trade figures follow an announcement on Monday that the EU and China have made progress in resolving their dispute over electric vehicles (EV). The European Commission in 2024 imposed tariffs of up to 35.3 per cent on Chinese EVs after an investigation into subsidies and Beijing retaliated by launching similar probes into European dairy, pork and brandy.
The Commission on Monday issued a “guidance document” for Chinese EV manufacturers to set minimum prices for their products in the EU. The price should be set at a level that would remove the impact of subsidies in making the Chinese vehicle less expensive to produce.
“The European market is open to electric vehicles from all around the world, provided that they have come here according to that level playing field,” European Commission spokesperson Olof Gill said.
“If those conditions are met, then we can look at price undertakings in a serious way.”
The minimum pricing system would replace the tariffs, which did not stop Chinese EVs from increasing their market share in Europe. The Chinese commerce ministry welcomed the Commission’s statement, which stressed that the agreement would comply with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
“This is conducive not only to ensuring the healthy development of China-EU economic and trade relations, but also to safeguarding the rules-based international trade order,” the commerce ministry said.
During his meetings with Xi Jinping and other senior Communist Party officials in Beijing last week, Taoiseach Micheál Martin heard that China is seeking a new framework for its relationship with the EU. Following his visit, Beijing lifted a ban on Irish beef imports which had been in place for over a year after the discovery of an atypical case of BSE.