The Third Session of the 14th National People's Congress held an economic theme press conference today (6th), and the heads of relevant departments answered questions from Chinese and foreign reporters on issues such as development and reform, fiscal budget, business, financial securities, etc.

Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao introduced that through the joint efforts of all parties, my country's foreign trade performance last year was obvious to all. The government work report pointed out that foreign trade exports contributed to economic growth and their achievements were hard-won. This contribution can be described in three "more":

· First, the status of a major country has been further consolidated. Last year, the year-on-year growth of goods imports and exports was 5% to 43 trillion yuan, and the share of exports in the international market is now initially expected to be around 14.7%. China has maintained its position as the largest country in goods trade for eight consecutive years. Service imports and exports reached 7.5 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.4%, nearly 10 points faster than goods trade. In US dollar calculation, service trade has exceeded US$1 trillion for the first time, which should show that our trade structure is undergoing profound changes.

·Secondly, the trading partners are more diverse. China has become the main trading partner of more than 150 countries and regions, among which countries jointly built the "Belt and Road" accounted for more than 50% of China's foreign trade imports and exports for the first time last year. This is a diversified strategy. We say that the West is not bright in the east, the North is not bright in the south, and the eggs are not put in a basket, which further reflects the strong resilience of our Chinese foreign trade. We have signed 23 free trade agreements with more than 30 countries and regions, and the proportion of imports and exports to free trade partners has increased to 34%.

·The third is the development momentum is stronger. In terms of goods trade, from coffee machines and sweepers to electric vehicles and industrial robots, the products exported by China are more technologically compatible and have been widely recognized internationally. Our cross-border e-commerce has achieved double-digit growth for many years, providing more consumption options for global consumers. In terms of service trade, China's rapid development of science and technology, including artificial intelligence, quantum technology, and cloud computing, is creating new paradigms for service trade. For example, what everyone talked a lot about is in-depth search for DeepSeek, which has lowered the threshold for global technology use with its low-cost and high-performance open source model; for example, "Black Myth: Wukong" and "Nezha 2" have driven the trade in services such as games and movies to go global.