In the first half of this year, facing challenges to the external environment, China's economy showed strong resilience, with GDP growing by 5.3% year-on-year. Globally, affected by the fiscal expansion factors of some major economies, the International Monetary Fund (hereinafter referred to as "IMF") has also adjusted its global economic growth rate in 2025 recently.

According to the IMF's July forecast, the global economic growth rate in 2025 will be 3.0%, up by 0.2 percentage points from the April forecast; in the July forecast, most major economies' growth rates in 2025 were raised, of which the numerical increase of the forecast for China reached 0.8 percentage points.

Zhou Zhaomei, global director of EY China Overseas Investment Business Department, analyzed that in order to cope with fluctuations in the global economic and trade order, China hedged external risks with the two pillars of "strengthening domestic demand" and "high-level opening up", providing stable policy expectations for the global market. "From the perspective of specific policies, stable macroeconomic policies provide solid support for the global development of Chinese enterprises."

In the first half of 2025, my country's foreign direct investment showed a trend of "stabilization and quality improvement". Non-financial direct investment in countries jointly built by the Belt and Road Initiative reached US$18.9 billion, an increase of 20.7% year-on-year; accounting for 26% of the total amount in the same period, accounting for 5 percentage points higher than the same period last year; popular investment destinations include Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia and Latin American countries.

At the same time, the transaction amount of countries jointly built by the "Belt and Road" doubled year-on-year. The transaction amount announced by Chinese companies reached US$10.1 billion, an increase of 97% year-on-year, accounting for about 52% of the total overseas mergers and acquisitions. Although the number of mergers and acquisitions decreased by 20% year-on-year to 79 cases, the significant increase in the amount indicates that Chinese companies' mergers and acquisitions activities in this region pay more attention to the improvement of quality and efficiency.

Market insiders analyzed that this trend change reflects the gradual upgrading of Chinese companies' strategic layout in the international market, fully demonstrating the key leading role of the "Belt and Road" initiative in promoting overseas mergers and acquisitions, and providing new impetus for the international development of Chinese companies.

Previously, at the press conference on the "Full 14th Five-Year Plan with high quality" series of themes held by the State Council Information Office, Li Chenggang, the international trade negotiator and vice minister of the Ministry of Commerce, said that during the "14th Five-Year Plan", my country worked with the "Belt and Road" to jointly build a country, adhered to the principle of consultation, joint construction and sharing, promoted pragmatic cooperation in the economic and trade fields, achieved fruitful results, achieved mutual benefit and win-win results, and made positive contributions to promoting the construction of an open world economy and building a community with a shared future for mankind.

From the perspective of trade, my country's trade in goods with the countries jointly built has increased from US$2.7 trillion in 2021 to US$3.1 trillion in 2024, with an average annual growth of 4.7%, and its share of overall trade increased from 45.3% to 50.7%, and further increased to 51.8% in the first half of this year.

Li Chenggang introduced at the press conference that at present, high-quality products such as durian, dragon fruit, coffee, etc. that have been jointly built in the country have entered the Chinese market, and related products such as my country's machinery and equipment, electronic components, etc. have also helped the development of the country's industry. From the perspective of investment, from 2021 to the first half of 2025, the two-way investment scale between my country and the co-construction countries exceeded US$240 billion, of which my country invested more than US$160 billion in the co-construction countries, and the co-construction countries invested more than US$80 billion in China. The "two countries and two parks" projects in China, Malaysia and China and Indonesia have become the "business card" for jointly building national industrial cooperation.