The APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade Meeting was convened in Suzhou from May 22 to 23. This is the third time for China to host this meeting after 2001 and 2014, and on a special occasion as this year marks the 35th anniversary of China’s accession to APEC.

Statistics show that Suzhou’s total foreign trade volume with other APEC economies surged from RMB 154.46 billion in 2001 to RMB 1.92386 trillion in 2025, a 11.5-fold increase with an average annual growth rate of 11.1%. In the first four months of this year, the trade volume with other APEC economies registered RMB 809.74 billion, 72.2% of Suzhou’s total foreign trade. Its growth rate stood at 34.3%, up 25.9 percentage points year-on-year and 2.6 percentage points higher than the city’s overall foreign trade growth.

In terms of product categories, exports of electromechanical products hit RMB 382.78 billion in the first four months, a year-on-year increase of 35% and accounting for 85.7% of Suzhou’s total export value to APEC economies. A wide range of consumer goods, including household appliances, suitcases and containers of the similar kind, and sporting goods and equipment, also registered growth.