CCTV News: On April 14, the State Council Information Office held a press conference. At the press conference, Wang Lingjun, deputy director of the General Administration of Customs, introduced that since 2025, with insufficient momentum for world economic growth, intensified trade protectionism and many geopolitical tensions, my country's foreign trade import and export scale has achieved steady growth, and the quality of development has also been steadily improving.
Wang Lingjun, deputy director of the General Administration of Customs, introduced that in the first quarter, my country's enterprises with import and export performance reached 529,000, an increase of 33,000 over the same period in 2024. Among them, the number of private enterprises hit a record high in the same period, reaching 455,000, accounting for 86.1% of the total number of enterprises with import and export performance in the same period.
my country's trade with traditional markets has maintained strong resilience, and its imports and exports to Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and other countries have achieved rapid growth. The high-quality joint construction of the "Belt and Road" continues to go deeper and more practical, and the growth rate of imports and exports to countries with joint construction is 0.9 percentage points higher than the overall. Among them, it increased by 7.1% for ASEAN and 6.9% for the five Central Asian countries.
The central and western regions of my country continue to leverage their own advantages, undertake industrial transfer in an orderly manner, and further release foreign trade potential. In the first quarter, imports and exports in the central and western regions were 1.84 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.7%, a growth rate of 7.4 percentage points higher than the overall national growth rate, and its proportion of national imports and exports also increased by 1.2 percentage points compared with the same period in 2024, reaching 17.9%. The development of new quality productivity has accelerated, and a number of upstream and downstream enterprises in the equipment industry chain with strong supporting capabilities and excellent product performance have been cultivated, which has promoted China's foreign trade to "new". General Administration of Customs: In the first quarter of this year, ASEAN continued to maintain its position as my country's first trading partner
The General Administration of Customs introduced that my country and ASEAN's economic and trade relations are becoming increasingly close, and trade complementarity continues to increase. In the first quarter of 2025, ASEAN continued to firmly rank as my country's largest trading partner, with imports and exports of 1.71 trillion yuan, an increase of 7.1% year-on-year, and its proportion of my country's overall foreign trade increased to 16.6%.
Lu Daliang, Director of the Statistical Analysis Department of the General Administration of Customs, introduced that the population of China and the 10 ASEAN countries together exceeds 2 billion, accounting for about one-quarter of the world. The open integration and common development of both sides have continuously released market potential and set an example of cooperation when globalization encounters headwinds. Taking cooperation in the agricultural field as an example, since 2017, ASEAN has remained the largest trading partner of agricultural products in my country for eight consecutive years.
In the first quarter of 2025, my country imported 52.65 billion yuan of agricultural products from ASEAN, an increase of 13.8%; exports of agricultural products to ASEAN were 37.92 billion yuan, an increase of 1.4%. The advantageous agricultural products of both sides meet each other's diverse needs.
In the first quarter of 2025, my country's imports and exports to ASEAN by railways, highways, water and air transport increased by 37%, 23.2%, 5.8% and 16.4% respectively. In the more than three years since the China-Laos Railway has been operating, more than 50,000 freight trains have been launched. The railway-sea transport in the new western land-sea channel has been "seamlessly connected", realizing "get on board as soon as you get off the ship, and get off the ship as you get off the ship."
