In the first half of 2026, China's gross domestic product increased by 4.7% year-on-year. Furthermore, grain production exceeded 150 million tons in the summer for the first time, and total import and export operations reached a record 25 trillion yuan ($3.69 trillion).
Despite growing external uncertainty, the Chinese economy has maintained overall stability and continues its transition towards more innovative and high-quality growth, demonstrating significant resilience and vitality.
While global economic growth is slowing down overall this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently lowered its forecast for global growth in 2026 to 3.0%, but raised its forecast for China's economic growth for the entire year by 0.2 percentage points.
China's success in a complex global environment is explained by four main concepts: stability, innovation, vitality, and integration.
In the first five months of the current year, China exported 187 high value-added liquid cargo vessels worth over 64.3 billion yuan, representing an 188.8% increase compared to last year. In the first half of the year, China's car exports exceeded 5 million units for the first time, with electric vehicle deliveries growing by 68.7%.
The strong performance of China's shipbuilding and automotive industries reflects the stability and competitiveness of the entire Chinese economy. China's economic expansion in the first half of 2026 was the largest in the same period over the past five years. China's ability to quickly respond to changing demand, compete in advanced industries, and enter new markets is supported by its complete industrial system, as seen in the growth of microchip exports and the expansion of the digital small goods trading network in Yuyue city, Zhejiang province.
Some economic indicators have experienced short-term fluctuations caused by both external difficulties and internal structural adjustments, but such fluctuations do not change the long-term direction of China's economic development.
Two recent breakthroughs illustrate this momentum. The victory of the motorcycle manufacturer ZXMOTO from Chongqing in the international superbike championship marked the end of the dominance of European and Japanese brands, highlighting the modernization of the motorcycle supply chain in Chongqing and the upgrading of China's traditional manufacturing industries.
Attention was also drawn to the adoption of the 'Tao Law' by tech giant Huawei, which promotes 'temporal scaling' instead of traditional geometric scaling in chip design. The company has already brought 381 chip models into mass production, indicating the rapid development of China's new industries.
Major scientific and technological achievements also occurred this year: China's supercomputer LineShine became the fastest in the world, and the 'Deep March-10B' rocket carrier achieved the world's first sea lift using a marine mesh system.
As technological innovations continue to drive industrial modernization, new productive forces are forming faster. Preliminary estimates show that new growth drivers, including high-tech manufacturing, the digital economy, and modern services, contributed more than 40% to China's economic growth in the first half of the year, underscoring the increasingly innovation-oriented and high-quality development of the economy.
As of June 20, consumer goods trade programs this year generated over 1 trillion yuan in sales, covering 136 million consumers. The demand from over 1.4 billion people for an improved quality of life continues to unlock the enormous potential of China's vast consumer market.
Artificial intelligence is strengthening industries across all sectors, while grassroots cultural events, such as village football leagues and rural galas, revitalize rural communities. New demand generates new supply, and new supply creates new demand, generating a cycle that sustains economic dynamism.
Some international business leaders refer to China as the 'world's weight room,' where successful companies become more competitive globally. Others call China the 'most reliable partner.' In May, China provided zero-tariff processing on all commodity items to 53 African countries with which it has diplomatic relations. As a result, imports of aquatic products and textile raw materials from Africa showed double-digit year-on-year growth in May and June.
This year, several Chinese hard-tech companies, including Unitree Robotics, successfully completed internal listing reviews, while other technology enterprises with core innovations accelerated their entry into the stock market. Investments in physical assets and investments in people are becoming more closely linked, and innovation, industry, capital, and talent chains are increasingly integrated.
China has also launched the Xiangshan open processor system and the Ruyi native operating system, which are jointly supported and continuously improved by developers worldwide. Since the start of pilot operation, the High-Energy Photon Source has received over 1700 experiment applications from research groups both domestically and abroad. China is steadily transforming from a technological follower to a global source of innovation.
The country's reform agenda continues to emphasize deeper integration across multiple areas: promoting closer cooperation between enterprises, universities, research institutes, and end-users; advancing the comprehensive development of culture, trade, tourism, sports, and exhibitions; encouraging integrated urban and rural development; and accelerating the creation of a unified national market. This focus on integration serves not only as a key to deeper reforms and innovation but also opens broader prospects for high-quality development. Based on its development goals and leveraging existing momentum, China's economy is confidently moving towards long-term, high-quality development with a promising future.
At the conclusion of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) and the High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai, China, there was a noticeable increase in participation from Global South countries.
One of the most tangible outcomes of the four-day conference was the establishment of the World Organization for Artificial Intelligence Cooperation—the first intergovernmental international structure in the world designed to address and utilize the opportunities of AI. Just one year after China proposed this, the agreement was signed by 29 founding states from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe on July 16. The ceremony was also attended by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
Among the signatories, which included Kazakhstan, Laos, Pakistan, Russia, Indonesia, and China itself, two common characteristics were found: all these countries have integrated AI into their national development plans and belong to the Global South. This raises the question of why developing nations are choosing Beijing to navigate the field of AI development and governance. The consensus reached in Shanghai points to two key factors: China's unique combination of technological power and its philosophy of soft governance.
The first factor attracting Global South partners is China's ability to provide practical, people-oriented AI technologies that successfully combine innovation with on-the-ground implementation. A prime example is the MAZU system—an AI-based early meteorological warning solution from China. An updated version of this system was officially handed over to Djibouti at the WAIC meteorological subforum. China also announced plans to provide this system to 30 countries over the next five years.
Ismail Nour, CEO of the Djibouti National Meteorological Agency, called this system a lifeline for his semi-arid country, which is prone to droughts and floods. He noted that the joint use of Chinese satellite data and AI computing power has helped save lives and support his country's economic development. He made this statement during an interview with China Media Group (CMG).
Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev led a large delegation, including telecommunications giants, AI startups, equipment manufacturers, and scientists, to WAIC. During the visit, more than 70 commercial deals worth over $15 billion were concluded with Chinese counterparts. Tokayev, calling 2026 the 'Year of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence,' stated his country's readiness for comprehensive cooperation with Chinese partners across a wide range of areas, including investment, localized technology development, joint scientific research, and human resource training.
He also expressed confidence that interaction between Kazakhstan and China in the fields of artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, and high-performance computing will become a central element guiding the next phase of their bilateral strategic partnership.
A previously published UN report revealed a structural imbalance: despite advanced AI capabilities nearly doubling since April 2024, and over a billion people worldwide using conversational AI tools weekly, Global South countries lag significantly behind developed economies in terms of AI access and adoption. As part of efforts to bridge these gaps, China, as a global leader in AI development, pledged to provide 5,000 opportunities in AI training and seminar programs for developing countries over the next five years. Furthermore, it presented actionable frameworks, transforming the Global AI Governance Initiative, first proposed in 2023, into concrete plans covering inclusive capacity building, cross-border coordination, and ethical constraints.
Shahbaz Khan, Director and representative at the UNESCO Regional Bureau for East Asia, told CMG that China's commitment to providing 5,000 AI training slots is a significant step that allows these nations to build their own AI data systems and applications based on open source code. China also renewed its promise to the international community to consistently act as a provider of global public goods in the AI sector during the conference. Open-source technologies became a key word appearing in almost all documents released at the event, reflecting China's specific initiative to promote global AI exchange. According to Xinhua, publicly available large AI models from China, whose source code, training, and other data are publicly accessible, have been downloaded over 10 billion times globally, surpassing all other countries.
Blade Nzimdane, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation of South Africa, told CMG that China provided comprehensive support resources as his country prepares to launch an AI center. Nzimdane emphasized that China acts not as a patronizing donor but as an equal partner, leveraging its technological advantages to provide practical assistance. Chen Yi, Professor at the University of the People's Democratic Republic of China, noted that given the central principle of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—'leaving no one behind'—open-source development must become an indispensable strategy for spreading the benefits of AI to the entire population. Chen also mentioned that China positioned AI from the outset as an empowering technology to advance the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, noting that China promoted and reinforced the value of open-source AI concepts on an unprecedented and large-scale global level.
Addressing the opening ceremony of WAIC on July 17, Guterres highly praised China's contribution to global AI governance and called China's open-source strategy a 'huge global success.'
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 4.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, reaching 69.57 trillion yuan (equivalent to 10.28 trillion US dollars).
Key economic indicators in the country demonstrated stable operation, supported by expanding new growth drivers. In the first six months of 2026, industrial output with added value from enterprises exceeding a certain size and having annual revenue of at least 20 million yuan grew by 5.4%. Particular attention should be paid to the growth in industrial output in the equipment manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing sectors, which increased by 9.3% and 13.3%, respectively.
Consumer activity also showed positive momentum: retail sales of goods and services grew by 2.7% compared to the previous year. The total volume of retail sales of consumer goods for the period from January to June amounted to 24.87 trillion yuan. Furthermore, the service sector demonstrated an increase in output of 5.2%.
China's foreign trade during this period was very active: imports and exports totaled 25.47 trillion yuan, representing a year-on-year growth of 16.9%. However, fixed investment, excluding rural households, decreased by 5.7% year-on-year, amounting to 22.64 trillion yuan.
Mao Shengyun, Deputy Head of the NBS, noted that China's overall economic activity in the first half of the year remained within acceptable limits as new qualitative productive forces continued to gain momentum. Nevertheless, Mao added that strengthening the foundation is necessary to ensure sustainable economic recovery, given growing external uncertainty and the imbalance between domestic demand and supply.
Bruce Pang, Associate Professor at CUHK Business School, highlighted the main strengths of China's economy in the first half: consumption recovery, increased rural incomes, and the resilience of high-tech manufacturing. Among the negative factors, he pointed to the continued weakening of investment, declining capacity utilization, and moderate consumer demand. Pang forecasts that the economy will maintain moderate recovery in the second half of the year, emphasizing that policy efforts should be directed towards stabilizing investment, stimulating domestic demand, and supporting industrial modernization.
