First 2 Months: Yangtze River Delta's Share of National Foreign Trade Rises to 38.8% Shanghai's Multiple High-Tech Product Exports Double in Scale

Shanghai Customs latest data shows that in the first two months of this year, Shanghai’s total import and export value reached 796.57 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.1%, with the growth rate 4.8 percentage points higher than the national average. Among them, exports totaled 357.65 billion yuan, up 19.3%, with several high-tech products exceeding 100% growth in exports; imports reached 438.92 billion yuan, an increase of 26.4%.

Since February 2025, Shanghai’s import and export have achieved year-on-year growth for 13 consecutive months. Especially in February this year, Shanghai’s import and export reached 397.52 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.7%, the highest single-month growth rate since 2011.

Several experts stated that the high growth in Shanghai’s foreign trade in the first two months was mainly due to the low base last year and the “Spring Festival effect,” but the trend of upgrading exports to high-tech products will continue.

Multiple products saw export growth exceeding 100%

Against the backdrop of an 18.3% year-on-year increase in national import and export in the first two months, the Yangtze River Delta region continued to play a “ballast” role—Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Anhui had import and export scales of 1.03 trillion yuan, 989.01 billion yuan, 796.57 billion yuan, and 183.56 billion yuan, respectively, with year-on-year growth of 19.7%, 17.1%, 23.1%, and 29.3%. The total import and export of these three provinces and one city in the first two months was about 3 trillion yuan, a new high for the same period in history, accounting for 38.8% of the national total.

Notably, some segmented products have shown strong export momentum due to policy changes. Shanghai Customs data shows that in the first two months, Shanghai exported 26.71 billion yuan worth of electric vehicles and 7.57 billion yuan of lithium batteries, with growth of 112.6% and 94.9%, respectively, boosting the city’s overall export growth rate by 5.9 percentage points.

In January this year, the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration issued an announcement on adjusting export tax rebate policies for products like photovoltaics, deciding to cancel value-added tax (VAT) export rebates for such products starting April 1. The VAT export rebate for battery products will also be gradually phased out. These policy adjustments led companies to stock up in advance, providing some support to the foreign trade data for the first two months.

Additionally, driven by global port upgrades, rising demand for computing power, and manufacturing transformation, exports of shipyard cranes, high-voltage electrical equipment, and industrial robots in Shanghai increased by 120.6%, 77.4%, and 153.5%, respectively, in the first two months.

Yang Shaowei, an analyst at TrendForce, said that demand in the North American market is facing dual strong drivers—its power grid is at a critical point of replacement, coupled with huge demand for electricity from AI data centers, which is fueling a surge in transformer demand.

In the A-share market, the Shenwan Electric Power Equipment Secondary Industry Index has increased by about 25% since the beginning of the year. According to Nanjing Customs, in the first two months, transformer exports in Changzhou exceeded 650 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of over 70%.

Export of high-tech content continues to rise

Feng Lin, Executive Director of the Research and Development Department at Orient Securities, said that the high growth in exports in the first two months of 2026 was mainly due to the delayed Spring Festival, which caused the 2025 export base to be relatively low, and the later holiday period led to a significant pre-holiday export effect. Moreover, steady progress in manufacturing transformation and upgrading continues to drive exports of new energy vehicles and high-tech products.

In the first two months, Anhui Province exported 275,000 vehicles (including chassis), a year-on-year increase of 121.6%, with electric vehicle exports reaching 110,000 units, up 378.9%. Hangzhou Customs data shows that during the same period, Zhejiang’s “new three” categories of exports grew by 47.4%, with electric vehicles and lithium batteries increasing by 1.1 times and 1.2 times, respectively.

While exports are rising rapidly, Shanghai’s imports also performed strongly in the first two months. Especially with the rapid development of AI, upstream equipment, storage, and CPU products demand has exploded.

Shanghai Customs data shows that in the first two months, Shanghai imported 159.25 billion yuan worth of electromechanical products, up 14%. Among them, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, storage components, and central processing units were imported at 8.34 billion yuan, 6.2 billion yuan, and 1.95 billion yuan, with year-on-year growth of 43.9%, 100.8%, and 111.3%; imports of aircraft parts reached 5.04 billion yuan, an increase of 124.6%.

Feng Lin analyzed that the global demand for AI computing power has driven semiconductor prices to rise sharply, and domestic computing infrastructure and semiconductor industry exports have also increased China’s semiconductor import demand.

It is reported that this year, Shanghai will make every effort to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment, continuously strengthen the foreign trade coordination mechanism, implement a new round of policies to stabilize foreign trade and cross-border trade facilitation, vigorously develop high-level trading companies, support enterprises in actively exploring diversified international markets, and comprehensively enhance the ability to prevent and respond to trade risks.