As winter arrives, the production workshop of Dongguan Wanle Tonghua Baby Products Co., Ltd. is filled with the hum of machinery, where workers are rushing to produce plush toys, striving to ensure the delivery of overseas orders before the Spring Festival. In 2026, this company plans to intensify its efforts to explore the U.S. market, focusing heavily on AI toys and "Guochao" (China-chic) themed toys. Guangdong-made goods are traversing the globe, with "Made in Guangdong" currently leveraging its diverse advantages to reach international markets. Pudu Robotics secured the "first export order" of 2026 nationwide, shipping its intelligent service robots from Shenzhen ports to ASEAN and the EU; Thunderbird Innovation bravely entered the CES exhibition with the world's first binocular full-color AR glasses supporting eSIM functionality; while companies represented by Creality and Bambu Lab occupy 90% of the global entry-level 3D printing market by leveraging supply chain and technological strengths.
Data further corroborates this trend: at the Fifth Session of the 14th Guangdong Provincial People's Congress held on January 26, the Guangdong Provincial Government Work Report revealed that the total import and export value for 2025 surpassed 9 trillion yuan. Concurrently, Guangdong set a target for approximately 3% growth in total import and export value for 2026, explicitly advocating for the sustained and stable development of goods trade, seizing opportunities to accelerate the growth of service trade, and positioning itself as the nation's high-level open gateway hub. Specifically, Guangdong's foreign trade import and export increased by 4.4% year-on-year in 2025, maintaining its position as the national leader in scale for the 40th consecutive year, contributing 24.1% to the nation's foreign trade growth, ranking first in the country. Building on this foundation, several Guangdong foreign trade enterprises expressed confidence in the 2026 export outlook during interviews.
Liu Ying, a researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, analyzed that based on Guangdong's部署 (deployment), its 2026 foreign trade strategy will focus on "stabilizing scale, optimizing structure, and improving quality." This will involve leveraging the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area's role as an open hub to promote the export of high-quality, high-tech, and high-value-added products, accelerating the shift from an export-oriented model to a globally resource-allocating trade system, and constructing an internationally competitive headquarters-type foreign trade system. The Guangzhou Port Nansha Port Area.
At the 2025 Autumn Canton Fair, innovative products from Guangdong Lingdu Intelligent Technology Development Co., Ltd., such as its high-altitude robots, attracted inquiries from Middle Eastern clients like the UAE and Saudi Arabia immediately upon debut, thanks to superior obstacle-crossing capabilities and intelligent navigation systems, securing orders exceeding ten million yuan. "Foreign trade business already accounts for half of the company's total revenue, achieving a rapid 60% sales growth in 2025," Huang Jian, the company's deputy general manager, stated, adding that the company is actively expanding overseas markets, particularly focusing on water-scarce regions like the Middle East and markets with high labor costs. "Goods trade is transitioning from scale leadership to structural superiority. It no longer relies solely on low costs and high volume but emphasizes hard technology, digitalization, and building global competitiveness," Liu Ying commented, noting that robust trade growth is supported by multiple factors, including continuous optimization of the trade structure, increasingly diversified market布局 (layout), a strong industrial base, and the accelerated release of new quality productive forces.
From a market structure perspective, while consolidating traditional markets, Guangdong is accelerating its expansion into emerging markets, with显著 (significant) results from its diversified布局 (layout). In 2025, Guangdong's import and export scale with its top three trading partners—ASEAN, China's Hong Kong region, and the EU—each exceeded one trillion yuan, growing by 5.8%, 12.5%, and 8.4% respectively. During the same period, import and export growth with emerging markets such as the five Central Asian countries, Africa, and the Middle East outpaced the province's overall level. Import and export with countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative reached 3.66 trillion yuan, a 5% increase, accounting for 38.5% of the total import and export value.
Regarding product structure, the effects of modern manufacturing cluster construction are rapidly translating to the export side, significantly enhancing enterprises' export competitiveness. In 2025, the export scale of high-tech products in Guangdong exceeded one trillion yuan for the first time, reaching 1.14 trillion yuan, a 15% increase. Behind these impressive results is the strong leadership of a range of flagship products—exports of lithium batteries, metering and testing instruments, medical equipment, machine tools, 3D printers, and auto parts all ranked first nationally, accounting for approximately 30% of China's exports of similar products. The vitality of enterprises going global continues to surge. Wang Guoquan, chairman of Aima CNC, revealed that the company experienced significant overall growth in 2025, with an annual growth rate of 65%, and its intelligent cutting equipment products have been exported to multiple regions including Southeast Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Guangdong Haixin Intelligent Kitchen Co., Ltd. achieved export sales of 1 billion yuan for the year, primarily to the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, and is currently focusing on developing emerging markets like ASEAN, the Middle East, and Latin America.
This year, Guangdong has set a growth target of "approximately 3% growth in total import and export value," explicitly proposing to promote the sustained and stable development of goods trade. This involves actively seeking all potential markets and growth opportunities, fully consolidating traditional markets, intensifying efforts to explore emerging markets, and accelerating the establishment of a medium- to long-term import-export trade hedging and balancing mechanism. Wang Zhen, Director of the Fourth Institute of Regional Development Planning at the China (Shenzhen) Institute of Comprehensive Development, stated that this formulation indicates that medium- to long-term foreign trade stability has become more crucial. Looking towards the longer term, it is necessary to enhance the stability and risk resilience of import and export trade through systematic and forward-looking institutional design and policy arrangements, which is also the core objective guiding the direction of stabilizing goods trade.
The Guangdong Provincial Government Work Report also emphasized successfully hosting and utilizing the Canton Fair to enhance the function of trade promotion platforms. It aims to consolidate the dominant position of general trade, promote processing trade to extend towards both ends of the industrial chain, vigorously expand intermediate goods trade, and promote the development of green trade. It seeks to promote the high-end, branded, and intelligent development of cross-border e-commerce. Expanding the import of high-tech products, equipment, and energy resources. Promoting the high-quality development of comprehensive bonded zones. Facilitating the integrated development of domestic and foreign trade. "The functions of comprehensive bonded zones are no longer limited to traditional bonded processing; more new foreign trade formats are being piloted here first," Wang Zhen further commented. In 2025, Guangdong's bonded logistics import and export reached 1.93 trillion yuan, growing by 9.1%, with its share of the total import and export value exceeding 20% for the first time. The policy for cross-border e-commerce export overseas warehouses, featuring "tax rebates upon departure, accounting after sales," was fully implemented, leading to a 9.8-fold increase in cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouse exports for the year. Open platforms such as comprehensive bonded zones and pilot free trade zones performed outstandingly, with import and export growth rates higher than the province's overall foreign trade level.
According to the "Global Trade Outlook and Statistics" report released by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in October last year, global goods trade growth in 2026 is projected to be only 0.5%. Against this backdrop, service trade is becoming a key growth engine. In 2025, Guangdong's service trade grew by 12.5%, demonstrating strong vitality. This year's Guangdong Provincial Government Work Report explicitly proposes to expand the opening up of the service sector and build a global hub for service trade. It supports industrial enterprises in developing into integrated solution providers based on manufacturing. It aims to accelerate the formation of advantages and brands in areas such as game出海 (going global), software outsourcing, cross-border finance, cross-border tourism, and foreign-related legal services.
Wang Zhen stated that the global service trade market is a blue ocean for growth, and as the top foreign trade province, strengthening service trade development is highly significant for Guangdong. He mentioned that at the policy level, there is encouragement for upgrading from traditional services to emerging services, promoting the formation of characteristic service industry clusters. "Currently, there is no unified statistical standard for service trade nationally; it's quite complex, with different calibers used by various cities." On the policy front, on January 4 this year, the "Implementation Opinions of the General Office of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee and the General Office of the Guangdong Provincial People's Government on Promoting High-Quality Development of Digital Trade and Service Trade through High-Level Opening Up" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions") were announced, proposing 18 implementation opinions focusing on vigorously developing digital trade and promoting the innovative development of service trade.
Simultaneously, international high-end platforms are bringing strategic opportunities for rules alignment and brand upgrading to Guangdong. The Informal APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting is scheduled to be held in Guangdong Province in November this year. "The significance of the APEC meeting lies not only in successfully hosting an international conference but also in promoting Guangdong's transition from an efficient 'open hub' to an important角色 (role) capable of participating in, outputting, and even shaping Asia-Pacific economic rules. This is the focus of achieving high-level opening up," Liu Ying stated.
Global布局 (layout) at the enterprise level is also deepening concurrently. The Guangdong Provincial Government Work Report points out the need to健全 (improve) the comprehensive overseas service system and cultivate more multinational corporations originating from and headquartered in Guangdong. Data shows that the Guangdong Provincial Department of Commerce certifies a batch of multinational corporate regional headquarters annually, having累计 (cumulatively) certified 74 to date, including Walmart (China) Investment Co., Ltd. and Zhuhai Federal Pharmaceutical. Wu Qiaomei, Brand Marketing Director for the Guochao business at Dongguan Wanle Tonghua Baby Products Co., Ltd., stated that in 2026, they will further increase efforts to develop the U.S. market, having already established a dedicated team and set up a subsidiary in Hong Kong to focus on promoting cooperation with U.S. chain retailers and supermarket channels. AI toys and Guochao toys will be the key investment areas for the new year. "Last year we achieved technological breakthroughs in our products, expected to address about 70% of the issues in the target market. In 2026, we will reach more customers," Huang Jian expressed considerable confidence in this year's export prospects. He believes that the technological leadership of the company's products, combined with policy guidance in smart manufacturing and artificial intelligence in Guangdong, injects strong momentum into foreign trade growth, with the potential to achieve 200% growth.
However, some interviewed enterprises mentioned that current uncertainties in overseas markets are high, order performance tends to be conservative, and factors such as intensified industry competition and fluctuations in the international situation mean they have not yet planned to raise business growth targets for this year. The "Guangdong Goods Go Global" promotion campaign mentioned in the Guangdong Provincial Government Work Report is recently in full swing. According to incomplete statistics, this spring campaign will host nearly 30 key events, attracting over 6,000 enterprises to participate,集中 (centrally) showcasing Guangdong's hardcore strength in high-tech, fashionable apparel, flavorful food, and cultural-tourism integration sectors.
Wang Zhen analyzed that in the process of "Guangdong goods going global," enterprises should pay more attention to brand building. "Whether by establishing local brands in target markets or shaping brand image through cross-border e-commerce, the fundamental point is to shift the operational focus from simply 'selling goods' to building a sustainable brand system." "Guangdong's foreign trade has entered a new phase of high-quality globalization. The development logic is shifting from scale expansion to a new paradigm integrating institutional leadership, technological empowerment, and global布局 (layout)," Liu Ying suggested. She recommended that Guangdong should leverage world-class ports and rules alignment as channels, advanced manufacturing as the foundation, and headquarters economy and digital trade as engines to create a "Guangdong model" for China's participation in global economic and trade governance, which is also the core answer to building a strong trade province.
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