China’s tech champions drive a surge in digital-service exports, lifting trade surplus to a record

Major Chinese internet firms accelerated international expansion in 2025, producing a marked rise in cross-border receipts for digitally delivered services. The biggest contributors were platforms that scaled live-streaming commerce, cloud hosting and AI-enabled services for foreign customers, moving beyond app monetization into recurring infrastructure and platform sales. Official balance-of-payments figures show China’s trade surplus in digitally delivered services more than doubled year‑on‑year and reached an all‑time high in 2025. The telecom, computer and information‑services category — which captures cloud, data processing and AI‑linked offerings — grew at roughly a 30% clip in the same period, reflecting demand for both managed services and white‑label deployment. This expansion suggests Chinese firms are exporting not only consumer-facing products but also scalable backend capabilities that hyperscalers and enterprises can buy into overseas. At the regional level, concurrent export strength in Taiwan’s AI hardware and server shipments has reinforced demand across the stack: more chips and servers feed hyperscaler buildouts that in turn consume cloud and AI services. Policy moves that eased trade frictions and tied market access to investment have helped sustain hardware flows in some markets, indirectly supporting service adoption. Investors and incumbents should expect competitive pressure to widen across both low‑margin hosting and higher‑margin AI deployment, with margins and customer relationships increasingly determined by integrated offerings. Policymakers will monitor cross‑border data flows, capital movements and localization needs as commercial footprints expand, and some jurisdictions may respond with tighter scrutiny or new rules. Operational risks — including geopolitical tensions, supply‑chain bottlenecks and localization mandates — could still slow expansion into sensitive markets. Despite those headwinds, the 2025 results mark a structural reallocation of export value toward monetized digital services, and signal that platform strategies will increasingly emphasize service exports, partnerships and local presence to sustain momentum.