The top position in foreign trade among cities in central and western China has changed hands.

Foreign trade continues to maintain high growth, and the industry reshuffle is accelerating.

In the first three quarters, China's total import and export of goods trade reached 39.94 trillion yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 18.8%. Among them, exports and imports rose by 16.4% and 22.3% respectively. Against the backdrop of booming overall performance, the foreign trade rankings of major cities have also witnessed a drastic reshuffle.

Compared with last year, among the top 20 foreign trade cities nationwide in the first three quarters of this year, Suzhou overtook Beijing to rise to the third place; Wuxi climbed 5 consecutive places, jumping from the 14th all the way into the top 10 and ranking 9th. In terms of shortlisted cities, Wuhan and Hefei broke into the top 20, while Nanjing and Foshan dropped out of the list.

But the most striking contrast still lies in Xi'an. Its ranking soared directly from 19th last year to 12th this year, up 7 places. Its growth rate even reached an astonishing 115.5%, ranking first among all sub-provincial cities and the top 20 foreign trade cities.

Thanks to this rapid rise, Xi'an has also become the new top foreign trade city in central and western China. What makes Xi'an achieve this? Does this mean that Xi'an's "low growth" state that has lasted for a period of time is ushering in a turning point?

01

Certainly, Xi'an did not suddenly explode in the third quarter.

In the first half of this year, Xi'an's foreign trade already recorded a growth rate of 96.2%, ranking first among the top 20 foreign trade cities. Moreover, it overtook Chengdu to become the second largest inland foreign trade city only after Chongqing. In the third quarter, it overtook Chongqing again, rising to the top foreign trade city in central and western China.

It is worth mentioning that in the past, Chengdu and Chongqing have long occupied the "top two positions" in inland foreign trade. Relatively speaking, before this year, the foreign trade volume of Xi'an was not in the same order of magnitude as that of Chengdu and Chongqing. For example, last year, Xi'an's foreign trade volume was 498.79 billion yuan, which was only 58.74% and 62.30% of that of Chengdu and Chongqing respectively.

Then, how did Xi'an manage to achieve the latecomer advantage at such a fast speed?

In fact, the most prominent reason for this round of reshuffle among foreign trade cities is the continuously rising global AI market. Cities that have rapidly improved their foreign trade rankings and volume, typically represented by Shenzhen, Suzhou, Wuhan, Hefei and Xi'an, are all directly related to their successful capture of the AI trend.

Take Xi'an as an example. The detailed data for the third quarter has not yet been released, but we can refer to the data of Shaanxi Province as a whole.

In the first three quarters, the total import and export value of Shaanxi reached 797.84 billion yuan, ranking 11th nationwide and sprinting towards the national top 10. The year-on-year growth rate was as high as 111.1%, ranking first nationwide. Among them, the export of integrated circuits reached 346.69 billion yuan, up 251%, and the import reached 117.53 billion yuan, up 142.8%; the export of automatic data processing equipment and its parts reached 110.18 billion yuan, up 387.9%.

Obviously, under the background that Xi'an's foreign trade volume has long stably accounted for more than 90% of the provincial total, these foreign trade driving forces directly related to AI are largely contributed by Xi'an alone.

In the first half of this year, Xi'an's integrated circuit exports alone reached 154.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 200%; the exports of automatic data processing equipment reached 53 billion yuan, up 340%.

Different from Wuhan and Hefei, which mainly rely on local giants to seize this round of AI trend, Xi'an originally relied on the two international chip giants Samsung and Micron, thus occupying a non-negligible position in the global flash memory chip market. The pulling effect on foreign trade is naturally more prominent.

Of course, in addition to AI-related industries, automobiles are also an important part of Xi'an's foreign trade driving forces. From January to May this year, the total export value of Xi'an's automobiles reached 23.7 billion yuan.

02

It should be noted that whether it was Xi'an seizing the new energy vehicle industry trend in previous years and once ranking as the city with the highest new energy vehicle output nationwide, or this time seizing the AI trend to become the top foreign trade city in central and western China, the success behind it stems from early layout in previous years.

We have also analyzed many times before that Xi'an has a distinct feature in many fields, that is, it has pivotal leading enterprises. This is particularly typical in the fields of automobiles, chips and photovoltaics. This makes it possible for Xi'an's related industries to rapidly expand their scale once the trend comes, and the dividends can be seen immediately.

In addition, in terms of foreign trade channels, as an inland city, the mature operation of Xi'an China-Europe Railway Express also provides important support for the development of foreign trade. Last year, 6037 trains of China-Europe Railway Express (Xi'an) were operated, with the total number exceeding 30,000, accounting for about a quarter of the national total; in the first three quarters of this year, the operating volume of China-Europe Railway Express (Xi'an) also reached 4560 trains.

It can be said that the current foreign trade boom is exactly the result of Xi'an entering the "harvest period" after its long-term layout in industries and infrastructure.

However, on the other side of the coin, the fluctuation risks cannot be ignored. In fact, the impact of Xi'an's previous automobile output fluctuation on GDP growth has been quite obvious, and the chip industry also has obvious cyclical attributes at present.

Statistics show that affected by the tight global supply and demand of storage chips, the current average export price of storage chips has increased significantly compared with the same period in 2025. Among them, the average export price of storage chip particles rose from 2.6 US dollars in 2025 to 7.8 US dollars, with an increase of 200%. The average export price of multi-component integrated circuits also rose from 9.9 US dollars in 2025 to 28 US dollars, with an increase of over 180%.

How great is the impact of such price factors? From a national perspective, storage chips only account for 9% of the total export volume of integrated circuits, but contribute more than 70% of the total export value. At the same time, the storage chips exported from Shaanxi are mainly based on processing with supplied materials, which is a trade mode of "both ends outside the country".

These two realities mean that the current high-growth foreign trade has obvious price-driven characteristics, and it may be difficult to be proportionally converted into retained high added value in the short term.

03

In fact, the rare contrast of Xi'an's "skyrocketing foreign trade and stagnant GDP growth" since the beginning of this year has aroused widespread attention. In the first half of the year, Xi'an's GDP increased by 1.1% year-on-year, 2.7 and 3.6 percentage points lower than the provincial and national levels respectively.

Behind this contrast, on the one hand, the high growth of foreign trade mainly relies on cyclical and processing trade, with limited local added value rate, so its actual pulling effect on the overall economy and long-term value need to be improved; on the other hand, it is directly dragged down by weak investment and consumption.

In the first half of the year, the total fixed asset investment (excluding rural households) of Xi'an decreased by 29.9% year-on-year. The total retail sales of consumer goods decreased by 3.6% year-on-year, making Xi'an the only city in Shaanxi Province with negative growth in retail sales data, and also ranking last among the top 30 cities in terms of total retail sales of consumer goods. In addition, the added value of industries above designated size saw negative growth, and the secondary industry even decreased by 3.1% year-on-year.

The fluctuation of the automobile industry is certainly a direct incentive here, but looking at the development trajectory in recent years, this may more deeply reflect that Xi'an's overall economic resilience and industrial depth still need to be improved.

It can be said that solving this "old problem" is exactly the key for Xi'an to go through cycles in the future.

At present, riding the "traffic" east wind of high foreign trade growth, whether Xi'an can strive for more long-term value precipitation and upgrade its short-term export advantages into long-term development momentum is exactly the realistic test facing the city.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Western City Story", written by Xibu Jun, and published with authorization by 36Kr.