Nation's digital trade surplus doubles in 2025

China's digital services exports hit a record high in 2025, propelled by the rapid global expansion of technology giants in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, helping the country more than double its digital trade surplus and partially fill a long-standing gap in overall services trade.

Latest data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed that the country's digital services trade surplus jumped to about $33 billion in 2025, a more than 100 percent increase from the previous year.

While it covers a broad swath of sectors from telecom operations to cloud computing and AI-related services, the surplus in telecom, computer and information services reached roughly $31.8 billion, up nearly 30 percent from a year earlier.

The rapid rise of digital exports has helped counterbalance China's structurally weak services trade position. While the country posted a $1.2 trillion goods trade surplus in 2025, it has long run a deficit in services, largely due to heavy spending on overseas travel and transportation.

Chen Jianwei, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics' Academy of China Open Economy Studies, said: "The sharp narrowing of the services trade deficit signals an optimization of the current account structure and suggests that services trade is gradually becoming a new engine supporting China's trade balance.

"In 2025, service exports grew much faster than imports, knowledge-intensive services expanded their surplus, and inbound travel rebounded strongly. These point to improving international recognition of China's high-value-added services and a fundamental improvement in the consumption environment for foreign visitors," Chen said.

He added that the growth in import and export of telecommunications, computer and information services demonstrated that China has moved into a more dominant technological niche in the global digital supply chain.

According to the International Monetary Fund's classification of cross-border activities, China ranks as the world's fourth-largest provider of telecommunications, computer and information services. This global standing is further reflected in a recent report on digital trade, which shows that China's computer services exports account for 9.3 percent of the global total.

This robust momentum is underpinned by the global expansion of major Chinese tech companies. Tech players such as Alibaba Group and ByteDance have established mature overseas footprints in the e-commerce, gaming and social networking sectors. Meanwhile, Tencent Holdings' cloud presence has extended from Silicon Valley to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, providing a range of services from video conferencing support to low-latency connections for gaming.

Notably, cloud computing has emerged as a standout performer in international markets, with its overseas market scale reaching 45 billion yuan ($6.3 billion) in 2024, a year-on-year surge of more than 40 percent, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed.

Liu Weiguang, senior vice-president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, said that Chinese cloud providers have benefited from years of experience supporting high-traffic domestic platforms, such as e-commerce festivals and short-video apps.

"Those extreme, high-concurrency scenarios pushed us to build globally unified architectures and strong cross-region deployment capabilities," Liu said.

He added that Chinese firms' emphasis on round-the-clock, rapid-response customer service — once criticized as too labor-intensive — has become a competitive advantage overseas.

China has placed digital trade at the center of its economic strategy. Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said in a recent interview with Xinhua News Agency that China will make full use of its strengths in AI and the digital economy to develop services trade and cultivate new engines for foreign trade growth.

Local governments are echoing that push. In its government work report delivered in early 2026,Guangdong province pledged to accelerate the cultivation of leading digital trade enterprises with strong innovation-driven and resource-allocation capabilities. Zhejiang province has set annual targets, aiming for a 6 percent increase in services trade and more than 8 percent in digital trade.

Contact the writers at chengyu@chinadaily.com.cn