China’s commerce ministry outlined a bigger, service‑led opening for 2026 at a press briefing that reviewed 2025 operations and set out next‑year priorities. Officials signalled a deliberate widening of market access with services — notably telecommunications, healthcare and education — to be opened in an orderly, pilot‑driven way while the ministry presses measures to deepen foreign participation across government procurement, consumer stimulus and bidding processes.
The ministry announced an imminent launch of a national overseas integrated services platform designed as a single window for firms ‘going out’. The platform will aggregate resources across foreign affairs, legal, tax, finance, trade, logistics, customs and trade promotion to offer policy guidance, business facilitation, country information, resource matchmaking and risk controls for Chinese companies expanding abroad.
On digital trade, Beijing said it will create a national digital trade demonstration zone and work on domestic standards that can interoperate with international norms. The aim is to accelerate digital transformation in service outsourcing, to cultivate larger digital trade operators and to stage a global digital trade expo — signalling Beijing’s desire to shape technical and commercial rules as transactions and services go online.
Policy measures for 2026 will also stress support for foreign‑invested service companies to extend value chains and to upgrade into more specialised, integrated and digital operations. The ministry promised further optimisation of investor support tools — including tax credits for profits reinvested in China and affirmative treatment in foreign‑investment guidance — and pledged to treat foreign firms on an equal footing when mobilising consumption stimulus or awarding procurement contracts.
The announcements sit alongside consumer data underscoring Beijing’s domestic demand story: 2025 retail sales of consumer goods topped 50.1 trillion yuan for the first time, with consumption accounting for just over half of GDP growth. Officials said China not only wants to remain “the world’s factory” but also to be a “world market,” offering foreign producers broader opportunities in a very large domestic market.
Beijing framed the commercial opening in parallel with a diplomatic and multilateral push. China plans to step up engagement with the WTO as it marks 25 years since accession in 2026, back a successful 14th ministerial conference and press for reforms that place development at the heart of the WTO agenda. The ministry also highlighted deepening investment ties with Belt and Road countries, where China’s non‑financial direct investment rose 18% in 2025 to 2,833.6 billion yuan (283.36 billion yuan), and pledged continued free‑trade cooperation with multiple partners.
The tone of the briefing was outward‑looking but calibrated. Officials emphasised pilot projects, orderly liberalisation and the use of policy instruments to anchor foreign capital. They also underlined ongoing engagement with the United States to manage disputes and keep bilateral economic relations stable, describing 2025 talks as proof that dialogue can yield practical results even amid strategic competition.
For international businesses the package is consequential: it promises more commercial opportunities in services and digital trade, better facilitation for outbound Chinese firms and formal gestures of equal treatment in procurement and market access. Yet the ministry’s repeated emphasis on “orderly” opening, pilot schemes and domestic standards that must align with international norms hints at a cautious, phased approach rather than rapid, wholesale liberalisation.