At the press conference held by the State Council Information Office on January 26, Yan Dong, Vice Minister of Commerce of China, stated that in 2025, based on the positioning of commerce work as "three important pillars", the ministry rose to challenges and strived for progress, achieving an overall stable and steadily advancing development of the commerce sector, which made a positive contribution to the sustained recovery and upturn of the economy.

Yan Dong introduced that the achievements of the work in the past year were mainly reflected in the following four aspects: First, efforts to boost consumption yielded notable results. Adhering to the close integration of improving people's livelihood and promoting consumption, driven by the dual wheels of "policies + activities", we built the "Shop in China" brand and continuously unleashed consumption vitality. The total retail sales of consumer goods exceeded 50 trillion yuan for the first time in the whole year, reaching 50.1 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.7%. Consumption contributed 52% to economic growth, an increase of 5 percentage points. In terms of commodity consumption, we expanded the scope and improved the quality of the trade-in program for consumer goods; the sales volume of related products such as automobiles, home appliances and mobile phones reached 2.61 trillion yuan, benefiting 366 million person-times. In terms of service consumption, we launched initiatives to upgrade service consumption and benefit the people; the retail sales of services grew by 5.5% for the whole year, with that of cultural, sports and leisure services, tourism consulting and leasing, and transportation and travel maintaining double-digit growth. In terms of innovating consumption scenarios, we carried out pilot projects for the construction of an internationalized consumption environment and optimized the tax refund policy for overseas visitors, with the sales volume of tax-refundable commodities for overseas visitors nearly doubling.

Second, foreign trade maintained resilience. We effectively responded to external shocks and challenges, coordinated the development of the "three pillars" of goods trade, service trade and digital trade, vigorously explored diversified markets, and promoted the innovative development of trade. The scale hit a record high: the total import and export of goods reached 45.47 trillion yuan for the whole year, a year-on-year increase of 3.8%; the import and export of services stood at 7.2 trillion yuan in the first 11 months, up 7.1% year-on-year. Market entities became more dynamic: the number of business entities with import and export records exceeded 780,000, among which private enterprises accounted for 57.3% of the total foreign trade volume. We paid more attention to the balanced development of imports and exports, successfully hosted major exhibitions such as the China International Import Expo, and launched a series of activities themed "Shared Grand Market · Export from China", facilitating high-quality global products to "enter the Chinese market smoothly" and "achieve good sales".

Third, the space for two-way investment was continuously expanded. In terms of attracting foreign investment, we attracted and utilized foreign investment with greater efforts, steadily expanded the voluntary opening-up of the service sector, and continuously polished the "Invest in China" brand. More than 70,000 new foreign-invested enterprises were established in the whole year, a year-on-year increase of 19.1%, and the actually utilized foreign investment reached 747.69 billion yuan, with high-tech industries accounting for 32.3% of the total utilized foreign investment. In terms of outward investment, we promoted international cooperation in industrial and supply chains, advanced the integration of trade and investment, and deepened economic and trade cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative. We improved the comprehensive overseas service system; the non-financial outward direct investment reached 1 trillion yuan for the whole year, a year-on-year increase of 1.6%. China will not seek new special and differential treatment in the current and future negotiations of the World Trade Organization, and has pushed for the achievement of practical economic and trade development results with multiple UN agencies, APEC, the SCO, BRICS countries, the G20 and other organizations. The Initiative on International Economic and Trade Cooperation in Green Minerals released by China has attracted the participation of more than 20 countries and international organizations, actively promoting win-win cooperation.

"Going forward, the Ministry of Commerce will thoroughly implement the important arrangements of the Central Economic Work Conference. Centering on strengthening the domestic great cycle, smoothing the domestic and international dual circulation, and expanding the international circulation, we will focus on promoting the high-quality development of the commerce sector and make new contributions to a good start for the 15th Five-Year Plan period," said Yan Dong.

Source: China International Import Expo Bureau - People's Network