On March 10, the China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair) promotion event was held in Frankfurt, Germany, attracting extensive participation from representatives of various sectors including industry, commerce, finance, and aviation from both China and Germany. This promotion event was not only a routine exhibition publicity but also became an important window to observe the prospects of China-EU economic and trade cooperation. Su Bin, deputy director of the China Foreign Trade Center, revealed at the promotion event that the 138th Canton Fair attracted over 310,000 overseas buyers from 223 countries and regions to attend offline, setting a record high in participation scale. The 139th Canton Fair, which will open on April 15, will focus on showcasing cutting-edge technological achievements such as service robots, drones, and smart healthcare. “China Intelligent Manufacturing” innovative products will be numerous, becoming the biggest highlight of the exhibition.
The cooperation stories shared by German corporate representatives at the promotion event vividly demonstrated the profound foundation of Sino-German economic and trade relations. Jonathan Weigand, Quality Management Specialist of the German building materials and home furnishing chain company Globus, stated that since the 1980s, the company’s collaboration with the Canton Fair has extended from within the exhibition to beyond, gradually covering the entire chain including procurement, services, and localized layouts. Currently, the company’s procurement volume in China has exceeded $100 million. Thomas Krüdewagen, representative of the Offenbach region of the German Federation of Small and Medium Enterprises, pointed out that German companies focus on engineering technology, quality control, and technological innovation, while Chinese companies possess strong manufacturing capabilities, rapid innovation speed, and a well-established market system. The synergy of these two advantages can forge a highly valuable partnership. Huang Yiyang, Consul General of China in Frankfurt, emphasized that when the advantages of German “small but exquisite” enterprises align with the “large and comprehensive” Chinese market, it will inevitably give rise to a new landscape of complementary structures and mutually beneficial cooperation. Germany is China’s largest trading partner in the EU, with the bilateral trade volume of goods between China and Germany reaching 1.51 trillion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 5.2%, as economic and trade exchanges continue to deepen.
The recently concluded National Two Sessions of China sent a clear and firm signal: China’s door of openness will only open wider, and China is willing to share development opportunities with countries around the world. The 2026 Government Work Report explicitly stated, “Adhere to win-win cooperation, steadily expand institutional openness, broaden international circulation, and promote reform and development through openness.” The draft outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan released a “list of opportunities,” inviting the world to share the dividends of China’s modernization. The service sector has become a key area for the new round of opening-up. The 2026 Government Work Report deployed “expanding market access and opening-up fields with a focus on services, further expanding pilot programs in value-added telecommunications, biotechnology, foreign-funded hospitals, and other fields, orderly expanding openness in the digital sector, and reducing the negative list for cross-border service trade.” This deployment reflects a clear orientation toward deepening institutional openness, moving from commodity and factor flow-based openness to rules, regulations, management, standards, and other institutional aspects. On March 12, the Trump administration announced the launch of a new round of Section 301 investigations targeting over a dozen trade partners, including the EU, Mexico, and China, which could lead to a new round of tariffs. This series of unilateralist measures was described by Bernd Lang, chairman of the European Parliament’s Trade Committee, as “pure tariff chaos,” noting that “no one can understand this anymore—the EU and other U.S. trading partners are left with unresolved issues and growing uncertainty.”
The stability of China’s political system endows it with long-term strategic capabilities, which is the institutional advantage enabling China to persist in opening up and promote cooperative development. China does not need to adjust its strategies due to election cycles and can concentrate resources to break through “bottleneck” technologies. China actively embraces economic globalization, multilateralism, and free trade, becoming a strong defender and promoter of economic globalization.
At the promotional event in Frankfurt, Chen Longjian, President of the Bank of China Frankfurt Branch, pointed out that 2026 marks the beginning of China’s “15th Five-Year Plan”, with Sino-German economic and trade cooperation continuing to deepen, expanding from traditional manufacturing to new fields such as the digital economy, green and low-carbon industries, and artificial intelligence. Su Bin, Deputy Director of the China Foreign Trade Center, emphasized that against the backdrop of profound changes in the global economic and trade landscape, as important economies, strengthening cooperation between China and Germany not only benefits the two countries but also contributes to the stable development of the global economy. In the face of rising unilateralism and protectionism, China is adopting a more open attitude, injecting valuable certainty into a turbulent and changing world, demonstrating the responsibility of a major country.