China’s global trade surplus reached $1.2 trillion in 2025, a figure that sits outside the normal range of peacetime trade imbalances and into territory the IMF has characterized as destabilizing for the global economy. Total goods trade crossed $6.36 trillion, with exports rising 6.1% year over year even as PRC exports to the United States fell 20%—a structural redirection, not a contraction. Beijing found other buyers.

The composition of the export surge is strategically significant. Exports of wind turbines rose 49%. Industrial robots rose 49%. EV batteries climbed 26%. Machinery and tools gained 20%. These are not consumer goods traded for household income. They are the capital equipment and energy infrastructure of other countries’ industrial bases. China is not merely selling products; it is inserting itself into the productive capacity of economies that will, in a crisis, need to decide whether their supply chain dependency on China is a reason to stay neutral.

Taiwan’s largest trading partner is the People’s Republic of China. By a significant margin. The two sides of a strait that are separated by competing political claims, opposing military forces, and seventy-five years of antagonism trade more with each other than Taiwan trades with the United States and Japan combined. This fact sits at the center of the Taiwan strategic problem in a way that military analysis consistently underweights: the economic integration that has developed between Taiwan and China since the 1990s has created dependencies that shape the behavior of Taiwanese businesses, the political calculations of Taiwanese voters, and the investment decisions of multinational companies with operations on both sides.