Buoyant foreign trade will help underpin China's economic growth target for 2026, highlighting the resilience and long-term potential of the country's economy while serving as an important engine of growth and stability for the global economy, economists and business leaders said on Tuesday.

They also said that foreign trade will remain a stabilizing force for China's growth this year, supported by rising artificial intelligence investment, fiscal stimulus in key markets, and expanding trade ties among emerging economies. Together, these factors are expected to sustain export momentum, particularly in technology-intensive sectors.

China's foreign trade rose 18.3 percent year-on-year to 7.73 trillion yuan ($1.12 trillion) in the first two months of this year, data released on Tuesday by the General Administration of Customs showed.

During the same period, the country's exports rose to 4.62 trillion yuan, up 19.2 percent from a year earlier, while imports grew 17.1 percent year-on-year to 3.11 trillion yuan.

Chen Jianwei, a researcher specializing in foreign trade at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said that China's expanding middle-income group will continue to shift imports toward consumer goods, while rising high-tech and commodity imports will support industrial modernization and boost demand for exporters worldwide.

Yan Min, a researcher at the department of economic forecasting of the State Information Center in Beijing, said that China's strong start in foreign trade at the beginning of this year reflects the combined effects of improving global demand, the country's industrial strengths and the renewed vitality of market players.

"Global demand has shown marginal improvement, with the manufacturing purchasing managers' index remaining above the expansion line, while policies to stabilize foreign trade and deeper institutional opening-up have provided solid support for trade growth," Yan said.

Growth drivers maintained

Sheana Yue, senior economist at Oxford Economics, a global economic research and consultancy firm in the United Kingdom, said the Chinese government remains committed to maintaining a strong industrial base, suggesting that manufacturing and exports will remain key drivers of economic growth in the near term.

Yue said the main growth drivers in 2026 and 2027 will continue to be manufacturing investment and external demand, with consumption expected to gain importance as income and wealth effects strengthen later in the decade.

External conditions are also expected to provide support for China's trade outlook. Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley, said that with the United States avoiding a recession and gathering momentum in the second half of 2026, a gradual easing of global trade tensions and the broadening of global demand recovery are set to lift non-tech exports, aligning more closely with China's export mix.

Innovation hub

Foreign business leaders said that multinational companies no longer view China solely as a vast consumer market, but also as a key production and export base from which they supply global markets, as well as a hub of innovation and a vital arena where companies refine technologies, develop new products and sharpen their global competitiveness.

The latest trade data highlights China's central role in global supply chains. Foreign-invested enterprises in China recorded combined imports and exports of 2.2 trillion yuan in the first two months of the year, up 15.3 percent year-on-year, according to customs statistics.

According to a report released on Tuesday by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, a nonpartisan, nonprofit business organization based in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, about 45 percent of the 426 surveyed companies ranked China as their top global investment priority, up 6 percentage points from 2024.

The study also found that 75 percent of surveyed companies plan to reinvest in China in 2026. The chamber's member companies have earmarked an estimated $13.79 billion from profits in China for reinvestment over the next three to five years.

Harley Seyedin, chairman and president of AmCham South China, noted that US companies are reinvesting to expand their market share, innovate, localize their operations and integrate more deeply into China's economy.

Zheng Caixiong in Guangzhou contributed to this story.