Introduction

In 2025, discussions around China’s foreign trade will likely center on the “new three items”: electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products. This phrase has gained traction not only for its simplicity but also because it accurately reflects a significant shift in China’s export landscape. As traditional items like clothing, furniture, and home appliances no longer encapsulate China’s manufacturing competitiveness, a new wave of high-tech products is emerging as key exports.

The Shift in Focus

However, the changes are happening faster than the concepts can keep up. While the new three items continue to grow and remain vital to China’s foreign trade, a new focus is emerging: the shift from merely exporting products to participating in global division of labor. This has led to the emergence of a new term: robots, artificial intelligence, and innovative drugs are now seen as the “new new three items” in China’s foreign trade and industrial upgrade.

Robots

Starting with robots, they are the easiest to understand within the traditional export logic due to their clear commodity trade attributes. By 2025, China’s industrial robot exports are expected to grow by 48.7%, surpassing imports for the first time, making China a net exporter of industrial robots. In the first quarter of 2026, China’s robot exports reached 11.32 billion yuan, with products sold to 148 countries and regions, including 3.16 billion yuan in industrial robot exports, a 42% year-on-year increase. These figures indicate that robots are no longer just experimental technologies or concepts showcased at exhibitions; they are becoming integral parts of the global manufacturing system.

China has long been viewed as an executor in the global manufacturing chain, responsible for efficiently and reliably producing goods defined by others. However, the rise in robot exports signifies a new role: Chinese manufacturing is not just at the end of the assembly line but is now providing equipment, systems, and production capabilities. Previously, China imported machines to manufacture products; now, it sells machines made in China to factories worldwide.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is harder to quantify using traditional export metrics. It cannot be packed into containers or classified by customs codes; rather, it represents a digital capability that can flow across borders and be embedded in various scenarios. Meaningful AI exports are not just about a large model gaining attention on overseas social platforms but involve software services, model applications, industry algorithms, and digital infrastructure transforming into measurable cross-border revenue.

Thus, observing AI exports requires looking beyond goods trade to the changes in service trade and the software industry. In 2025, China’s total service trade import and export volume is expected to exceed 8 trillion yuan, reaching 80.8231 billion yuan, with a 7.4% year-on-year growth; service exports alone are projected to grow by 14.2%. Entering the first quarter of 2026, service exports continued to grow by 11.2%, with knowledge-intensive service exports increasing by 6.1%. Meanwhile, China’s software business revenue is expected to reach 1.54831 trillion yuan in 2025, a 13.2% increase, with software exports of 62.73 billion USD, up 7.7%. While these figures do not directly equate to “AI exports,” they collectively point to a deeper change: China’s international competitiveness is increasingly determined not just by factories and production lines but also by code, platforms, interfaces, cloud services, and industry solutions.

AI is forming its own “trade measurement unit.” According to the National Bureau of Statistics, by early 2024, China’s daily token (word unit) usage was about 100 billion; by the end of 2025, it surged to 100 trillion; and by March 2026, it exceeded 140 trillion, representing a growth of over a thousand times in two years. Tokens are the smallest units of information processed by large models and are becoming an important measurement basis for AI commercialization. This figure is significant not only due to its scale but also because it suggests a new value system is taking shape.

Innovative Drugs

If robots represent system exports and AI represents service exports, then innovative drugs signify a higher threshold for original R&D capabilities abroad. The National Medical Products Administration disclosed that in 2025, China approved 76 innovative drugs for market entry, a historical high. Among these, domestic innovative drugs accounted for 80.85% and 91.30% of chemical drugs and biological products, respectively. In the same year, the total value of innovative drug licensing transactions abroad exceeded 130 billion USD, with over 150 transactions, also a historical high.

These numbers reflect a transformation in China’s pharmaceutical industry: from imitation and following to original creation, licensing, and global collaboration. The export of innovative drugs often involves not just a box of medicine shipped from a Chinese port but a target, a set of technical routes, or a candidate molecule that enters the global value distribution chain in advance. What is sold is not just a product but also patents, platforms, clinical value, and future commercialization rights. This type of export is deeper and more challenging than physical goods; it tests original R&D, clinical design, regulatory communication, patent layout, and international collaboration capabilities.

Conclusion

When viewed together, the significance of the “new new three items” lies not in merely assembling a new trio but in their collective indication of a leap in China’s outbound capabilities. Behind robots is equipment manufacturing and system integration. Behind AI are algorithms, data, and digital services. Behind innovative drugs are original R&D and intellectual property. They are no longer just proving “I can manufacture” but demonstrating “I can define problems, organize systems, control key links, and share higher-level value.” In the past, China focused on gaining market share in the global industrial chain; today, it is delving deeper into the upstream of rules, standards, and value chains. This change is not a minor adjustment on the export list but a genuine shift in industrial logic.

However, the “new new three items” cannot be neatly categorized like the “new three items”. Robots are still closely related to goods exports, AI is more about digital services, and innovative drugs often achieve value through licensing, cooperation, and global rights. They may not appear on the same customs declaration but collectively illustrate one thing: China’s export competitiveness is shifting from “what to sell” to “why to sell”.

This “why” is key. It relies on system integration capabilities, model and data capabilities, and original R&D capabilities. Without manufacturing, robots lack physicality, AI lacks scenarios, and innovative drugs struggle to complete the long journey from laboratory to industrialization. Therefore, the ability to go global does not mean bidding farewell to manufacturing; rather, it represents a higher-level expression of manufacturing.

In the future, China’s participation in global competition cannot rely solely on “producing quickly, producing a lot, and producing cheaply”; it must also address deeper questions: Can it propose new solutions? Can it organize complex systems? Can it connect technology, scenarios, and markets? Can it leave its mark on the global value chain? From this perspective, robots, AI, and innovative drugs are not simple replacements for the “new three items” but three symbolic milestones in China’s transition from a manufacturing giant to a manufacturing powerhouse.

What truly deserves attention is not just where products have arrived but where capabilities have been embedded. It could be embedded in an automated production line of an overseas factory, in a model invocation and industry decision-making process, or in the global rights arrangement of an innovative drug. The story of China going global is shifting from delivering products to embedding capabilities in the world. This may be the deepest meaning of the “new new three items.”