China’s export earnings reached nearly $500m an hour, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the latest tax data, with AI-related goods accounting for about half of the year-on-year growth that pushed the figure to record levels.
China’s total exports rose 14.1% year-on-year in April to a record $359.4bn, ahead of consensus forecasts for higher figures, according to the report. Chinese custom data published last week. The trade surplus widened to $84.8bn in the month. Imports rose 25.3% year-on-year, slightly below March’s 27.8% but ahead of expectations.
Goldman Sachs and Nomura attributed almost half of April’s contribution to export growth in AI-related goods: semiconductors, computers, data center components, and industrial equipment installed in China’s AI infrastructure, which in turn is supplied to global markets. Combined regional exports alone reached $31.1bn for the month, mobile phone exports $84.1bn, and high-tech products totaled $104.0bn.
The growth landscape is reshaping the way economists and policymakers think about China’s export model. For most of the last decade, low-end consumer electronics, textiles and home furnishings have been top stories.
April’s data shows a markedly different mix, with semiconductors, server hardware, AI accelerators and the broader AI infrastructure segment delivering steady growth.
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Local diversity continued. Exports to the United States rose 11.3% year-on-year in April to $36.8bn, recovering from a 26.5% drop in March, despite Trump’s tariff regime.
Exports to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America accounted for an increasing share of Chinese export volume; analysts read the rebalancing as a structural response to US trade policy rather than a temporary diversion.
The AI angle complicates the strategic picture. The same Chinese factories that export semiconductors and server hardware that supply the world’s AI infrastructure are also the ones the US export control regime is designed to force.
BIS Business Directory enforcement has been tightened over the past twelve months, but China’s chip-and-server shipments continue to grow, suggesting that controls are not targeted enough, that demand is driving more expensive regulated components, or that significant trade is going through third-country intermediaries.
Bloomberg’s own figures translate April’s export average into a $500m-per-hour headline figure. The number is symbolic rather than functional; China shipping benefits are not available every hour. The purpose of the framework is to communicate the scale of trade relations that AI is now reshaping.
A long-term question for China’s trade policy is whether the AI-related export boom proves sustainable. Several factors are aligned: the hyperscaler AI-infrastructure capex in the US and Europe is running at record levels, the demand for memory and the supply of components has outpaced production, and Chinese manufacturers have moved up the value chain faster than the export control regime can adapt to.
There are several factors pushing the other way: growing trade tensions, continued US allocation of advanced chip capacity to domestic buyers and partners, and the possibility of more targeted restrictions on Chinese exports of the type used by Beijing in graphite processing and rare earth processing.
Customs data for May, which should start in early June, will be the next physical test. If AI-related exports continue to drive growth, studying the structure of China’s export economy will be difficult. If they are slow, the April count will read as a higher value than the baseline.
