What secrets lie behind the 120% surge in Shanghai's exports?

On a late-night in Shanghai's Yangshan Port, the lights of the container cranes cut through the night sky as a huge ship laden with goods slowly sails towards the Pacific Ocean. The export trade of this city, like a never-ending pulse, sends billions of yuan worth of "Made in China" products to the world every day. But behind these glamorous figures, what kind of transformation is Shanghai's export trade undergoing? And how will it respond to the restructuring of the global trade pattern?

According to the data of Shanghai Customs in 2023, the city's total export volume exceeded 2.3 trillion yuan, accounting for more than 7% of the national total. Mechanical and electrical products, high-tech products, and labor-intensive products form the "troika" of exports, among which the export volume of new energy vehicles increased by 120% year-on-year.

• Intelligent Upgrade: Mr. Zhang in a bonded area is showing the newly off-the-line industrial robots. "Now each device has a built-in multilingual operation interface, directly meeting the needs of overseas customers."
• Green Transformation: Ms. Li's photovoltaic enterprise has added a customized production line for Southeast Asia this year. "The power grid standards of different countries can be adapted."

When we conducted research at Zhongshitong, we found that there are three major variables hidden beneath the seemingly stable export data:

• The "nearshoring" policies of Europe and the United States have led to the diversion of some orders.
• The rise of manufacturing in Southeast Asia has brought about price competition.
• The cost of international logistics is still higher than the pre-pandemic level.

Shanghai enterprises are in three ways:

• Digital Trade: Through 3D sample libraries and VR factory inspection technologies, the traditional inspection cycle has been compressed from 45 days to 72 hours.
• Flexible Manufacturing: A clothing enterprise has achieved a minimum order quantity of 500 pieces per batch, with custom patterns delivered within 48 hours.
• Compliance Pre-positioning: The intelligent customs declaration system developed by Zhongshitong can automatically identify the product access rules of 132 countries.

When we met Wang, a foreign trade live-streamer who was live-streaming at Waigaoqiao, she had just completed a bilingual live-streaming session for Middle Eastern customers: "Now even excavators can be sold through live-streaming. Yesterday, a customer from Dubai directly placed an order for 5 units." This "cross-border e-commerce + industrial belt" model is giving birth to new trade species.

Standing on the automated terminal of Phase IV of Yangshan Port, watching the unmanned AGV carts shuttling to transport containers, one can't help but wonder: As the boundary between physical trade and digital trade gradually blurs, how should Shanghai, this "Eastern Shelf", redefine its own value? Perhaps the answer lies in those cross-border e-commerce offices that are still lit up late at night, in the intelligent customs declaration systems being debugged by engineers, and in the eyes of every trade practitioner who is adapting to the new rules.

Does the "Made in China" product you have recently come into contact with also hide Shanghai's trade code? Welcome to share your observations.