China, Central Asia sees record-high trade growth in the first five months of 2025

(ECNS) -- China's total trade volume with the five Central Asian countries grew by 10.4% year-on-year in the first five months of 2025, reaching 286.42 billion yuan ($39.93 billion), a record high for the same period in the previous years, according to data released by China's General Administration of Customs (GAC) on Sunday.

China's exports to these countries reached 188.18 billion yuan, up 5.6% year-on-year, while imports totaled 98.24 billion yuan, marking a significant increase of 21% compared to the same period last year, the GAC statistics showed.

As the initial location where the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was first proposed and a demonstration area of high-quality BRI cooperation, Central Asia has seen continuous deepening of economic partnership with China, and the scale of bilateral trade has steadily expanded, the GAC said.

 Data from the administration highlights that China's total imports and exports with the five Central Asian countries has expanded from 312.04 billion yuan in 2013 to 674.15 billion yuan in 2024, representing a 116% increase, with the average annual growth rate reaching 7.3%, 2.3 percentage points higher than the average annual growth rate of China's overall foreign trade during the same period.

China continues to actively tap into the agricultural cooperation opportunities with Central Asia, leading to an increasing flow of high-quality green agricultural products into the Chinese market.

In the first five months of this year, China's imports of agricultural products reached 4.36 billion yuan, reflecting a 26.9% year-on-year growth. Notably, imports of flaxseed from Kazakhstan surged by 202.1%, raisins from Uzbekistan grew by 153.7%, and honey from Kyrgyzstan saw a remarkable surge of 10.9-fold.

Enhanced infrastructure connectivity, particularly road networks, has hugely improved, with the proportion of road transport in China's total imports and exports with the five Central Asian countries rising from 19.9% in 2020 to 51.8% in 2024.

During the first five months this year, China's imports and exports with the five Central Asian countries via road transport reached 143.65 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.9%, consistently accounting for over a half of all modes of transportation.

(By Zhang Dongfang)