On November 2, 2025, ahead of the 8th China International Import Expo, the Launch Conference of 2025 China Import Development Report  and the 8th China Import Development Expert Seminar were successfully held at Beijing Normal University. The Report is jointly released by Beijing Normal University and the China Society for International Trade. As the first comprehensive national report on import trade, it aims to serve the national major strategies of actively expanding imports, support the China International Import Expo as a major national event, and contribute to the national strategic deployment of telling China's stories well. Since the launch of the China International Import Expo in 2018, the Report has kept pace with the Expo and been released consecutively for 8 years (2018-2025).

Attendees included Professor Wang Ming, Member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Vice President of Beijing Normal University; Jin Xu, President of the China Society for International Trade; Researcher Song Hong, Former Deputy Director of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Researcher Li Gang, Vice President of the China Society for International Trade; Researcher Liu Xiangdong, Vice Minister of the Department of Economic Research at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges; Professor Yang Rudai from the School of Economics at Peking University; Professor Ni Hongfu, Executive Dean of the School of Applied Economics at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Professor Sun Puyang, Dean of the Institute of China's Economic Reform and Development at Renmin University of China; Professor Hu Haifeng from BNUBS, as well as other teachers and students. Media outlets including China Education Television, People's Daily, People's Network, Shanghai Securities News, China Daily, Xinhua News Network, and Global Times supported the event. Professor Wei Hao, Associate Dean of BNUBS, Director of the National Import Research Center, and Editor-in-Chief of the China Import Development Report at Beijing Normal University, hosted the speech session. Professor Sun Zhijun, Secretary of the Party Committee of BNUBS, presided over the achievement release and expert seminar sessions.

On behalf of the university, Professor Wang Ming extended a warm welcome to the guests and scholars. He noted that opening up is a distinctive hallmark of Chinese-style modernization, and expanding high-level opening up is an inevitable path for China's economy to achieve high-quality development. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made a special chapter on expanding high-level opening up, providing fundamental guidelines and action plans for promoting opening-up work. Actively expanding imports is an important part of high-level opening up and a key link connecting the domestic and international markets. It plays a vital role in introducing advanced international factors, utilizing both domestic and international markets and resources, and empowering the development of new quality productive forces. How to do a good job in opening-up work in the new era, give full play to the strategic role of China's import trade, and accelerate the construction of Chinese-style modernization is a major issue that urgently needs to be studied. With the joint efforts of all parties, China's import trade will surely usher in broader development space, make greater contributions to promoting high-quality development of China's economy and global economic prosperity and stability, and further demonstrate China's great power responsibility of sharing development opportunities with the world.

Professor Wang Ming, Member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Vice President of Beijing Normal University

On behalf of the society, President Jin Xu warmly welcomed the participating experts and scholars. He pointed out that President Xi Jinping's series of important expositions on import trade have important ideological guiding significance for the development of China's import trade, providing action guidelines for China to actively expand imports with extensive content and rich connotations. Against the backdrop of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee explicitly proposing to "promote the balanced development of imports and exports", hosting the launch conference and expert seminar on the 2025 China Import Development Report to comprehensively, in-depth and systematically discuss the issue of actively expanding imports has multiple special significances. Firstly, it is a specific action to systematically study Xi Jinping Thought on Economics, especially to deeply understand the important expositions on import trade, closely integrating theoretical study with practical issues. Secondly, it is a concrete practice of basing on the national development overall situation, implementing the spirit of important central meetings, and transforming policy orientations into practical research results. Thirdly, it is a positive effort to focus on the goal of high-level opening up, gather wisdom, deepen research in the field of import trade, and contribute to promoting the high-quality development of China's import trade and better serving the construction of a new development pattern.

Jin Xu, President of the China Society for International Trade

Professor Wei Hao released the 2025 China Import Development Report. With the theme New Changes in China's Import Development from a Regional and Country Perspective, the Report mainly covers two parts: changes in China's import regional network and changes in China's import product structure. Using bilateral import trade data between countries around the world from 2001 to 2024, and drawing on and integrating advanced research methods from different disciplines, the Report systematically studies global import trade networks, Asian import trade networks, European import trade networks, American import trade networks, African import trade networks, etc., and analyzes China's status in these different import trade networks. In addition, the Report measures the changes and current situation of China's import product structure, compares it with the world's overall import product structure, as well as those of major developing and developed countries, and further analyzes the import trade relations between China and different types of trading partners. The research conclusions and new findings of the Report have important guiding significance for China to formulate strategic import trade policies in the future and build a stronger, larger and better "foreign trade circle of friends".

Professor Wei Hao, Associate Dean of BNUBS

In his keynote speech, Researcher Song Hong highly affirmed the research value of the Report, believing that the research topic is very important, with comprehensive and systematic content, which helps all sectors of society to objectively and comprehensively understand China's import trade issues. He systematically reviewed the evolution of China's import structure, pointing out that in the late 1980s, China gradually formed a production network pattern characterized by importing intermediate goods and exporting finished products by undertaking industrial transfer from developed countries. After joining the WTO, with the rapid expansion of China's manufacturing industry scale, the demand for importing energy and resource products grew sharply, and China tended to import raw materials and export high-value-added finished products. In recent years, affected by geopolitical factors, the import of high-tech products has faced severe challenges, forcing domestic acceleration of independent innovation and further stimulating the demand for import substitution of medium and high-tech products. Finally, he emphasized China's key position in the global trade pattern, believing that China has become an important force in reshaping the global trade pattern, and the strategic value of import trade should be further emphasized in the future.

Researcher Song Hong, former Deputy Director of the Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

In his keynote speech, Researcher Li Gang highly affirmed the Report, pointing out that China's import trade has formed distinct characteristics and unique advantages after years of development. Especially since joining the WTO, the scale of China's import trade has achieved leapfrog growth. At the same time, as China has basically completed the traditional industrialization process, the adaptability between import trade and domestic industries has been continuously adjusted, forming a positive interaction between import substitution and industrial upgrading. He emphasized the impact of changes in the external environment on import trade, pointing out that the financial crisis, trade frictions and export controls have brought severe challenges to China's import trade, and the stability of imports should be highly valued. Finally, he believed that in the future, it is necessary to further focus on the refined development of import trade networks, distinguish the characteristics of different trade blocs to improve cooperation accuracy, and help import trade better serve national major strategies and high-quality economic development.

Researcher Li Gang, Vice President of China International Trade Association

In his keynote speech, Researcher Liu Xiangdong pointed out that China's imports have occupied an important position in the global pattern. From the perspective of people's livelihood, imports have effectively met the demand for consumption upgrading, especially cross-border e-commerce imports have made it more convenient for high-quality foreign daily necessities to enter Chinese families. From the perspective of industrial development, limited by resource endowments, the import of primary products has become a rigid demand to support industrialization. With the decline in the proportion of processing trade and the increase in the proportion of general trade imports, the import structure has been continuously optimized. In the process of Chinese enterprises "going global", capital export has driven the import of intermediate goods and consumer goods, which is expected to better drive the domestic and international dual circulation. Finally, closely following the policy orientation, he pointed out that expanding imports has become an important direction for open development in the future, and suggested that future efforts should focus on key tasks such as accelerating the balanced development of imports and exports, integrating domestic and foreign trade, optimizing the trade structure, accelerating the opening up of the service industry, and promoting the integration of trade and investment.

Researcher Liu Xiangdong, Deputy Director of the Research and Information Department of the China International Economic Exchange Center

In his keynote speech, Professor Yang Rudai highly praised the Report, believing that it provides an important reference for understanding the strategic significance of China's import trade. He pointed out that on the one hand, it is necessary to systematically review the actual role of import trade over the years, especially pay attention to the role of China's huge import market in promoting product innovation, and at the same time think about the pricing power issue in the import of resources and energy products. On the other hand, it is necessary to clarify the long-term positioning of China's import strategy, and transform the dependency relationship in traditional trade by locking in long-term import orders, so as to fundamentally solve the passive dilemma of "buying when prices rise and selling when prices fall". In addition, he emphasized that imports are not an isolated link and need to be considered in the overall national economic context, taking into account the balance between current account and capital account, weighing the choice between imported products and overseas equity investment, solving the problem of inter-departmental coordination, and coordinating imports, exports, investment and other work.

Professor Yang Rudai, School of Economics, Peking University

In his keynote speech, Professor Ni Hongfu pointed out that first of all, when studying the structure of imported products, it is necessary to base on China's national conditions such as economic development level, industrial structure stage and resource endowment characteristics. When comparing with other countries, it is necessary to consider the differences in economic development stages of different countries, conduct in-depth analysis of the differences and evolution trends of import product structures during the same economic development stage, and provide reference for the adjustment of China's import product structure. Secondly, it is also necessary to attach importance to emerging fields such as digital trade imports and cross-border e-commerce imports. At present, digital trade is booming, and its import models and format innovations have an important impact on the traditional trade pattern. It is necessary to further strengthen the research and grasp of the development trend of digital trade imports to help import trade adapt to the trend of new formats. Finally, he emphasized the need to pay attention to the changes in total imports and structural characteristics of different regions in China. Through regional difference analysis, accurately match the industrial needs of various regions with imported resources, and promote import trade to better serve coordinated regional development.

Professor Ni Hongfu, Executive Dean of the School of Applied Economics, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

In his keynote speech, Professor Sun Puyang affirmed the academic value of the Report, believing that research on import trade and its evolution path is very important. He pointed out that the role of imports in economic development has become increasingly prominent. It is not only the key to ensuring people's livelihood supply, but also an important force for China to reshape international trade rules. By grasping the initiative in imports to take the lead in formulating rules, we can break the constraints of existing international economic and trade rules on China's industrial development. In addition, he pointed out that imports are an important carrier for practicing innovative trade development. The key to trade innovation lies in building new platforms, and import trade promotion demonstration zones and the China International Import Expo are typical representatives of such innovative platforms. Finally, he emphasized that imports are highly compatible with independent opening up and unilateral opening up. For the exclusive unilateral opening up to developing countries, the practical value of imports is far greater than that of exports. By expanding the scale of imports from developing countries, China can not only fully show its responsibility of expanding opening up to the international community, but also gradually gather the recognition of developing countries for China's formulation of trade rules.

Professor Sun Puyang, Dean of the China Institute of Economic Reform and Development at Renmin University of China

In his keynote speech, Professor Hu Haifeng believed that the Report focuses deeply on imports, laying a solid foundation for academic research and practical exploration in the field of imports. He pointed out that the current proposal of the strategy of actively expanding imports marks a new development stage of China's import trade from the past passive opening-up model to active opening up, showing the world the dividends of China's super-large-scale market with an open attitude and demonstrating China's responsibility and accountability in the global trade pattern. Finally, he emphasized the diverse and important values of import trade, but it is necessary to attach great importance to import security, especially in fields such as energy and food. Combining with the geopolitical situation, we should balance the initiative and passivity of imports, and coordinate long-term strategies with short-term needs.

Professor Hu Haifeng, BNU Business School

On behalf of the School, Professor Sun Zhijun extended a warm welcome to the participating guests. He mentioned that the country has attached great importance to import trade work in recent years. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly pointed out: promote market diversification and the integration of domestic and foreign trade, optimize and upgrade goods trade, expand intermediate goods trade and green trade, and promote the balanced development of imports and exports. Market diversification involves the issue of "import market structure", and optimizing and upgrading goods trade involves the issue of "import product structure". From the perspective of import product structure, in addition to primary products and technical products, the introduction of human capital, especially international talents, also falls into the category of imports, which is of extremely important strategic significance for China's development. It is necessary to further expand the extension and enrich the connotation of imports to better serve China's development needs.

Professor Sun Zhijun, Secretary of the Party Committee of BNUBS

Finally, Professor Wei Hao summarized the speeches of the experts and expressed his sincere thanks to the experts for their strong support to the conference. So far, the Launch Conference of 2025 China Import Development Report and the 8th China Import Development Expert Seminar have come to a successful conclusion.

Contributed by Lei Yiming

Edited by Sun Yue

Reviewed by Hu Conghui