Xi'an Trade Surges 115.5% in First Three Quarters, Driven by AI Chip Exports

According to a South China Morning Post report, Xi'an, the capital of China's Shaanxi province, recorded a 115.5 per cent year-on-year surge in total trade during the first nine months of 2026, with exports climbing 142.1 per cent. This performance made it the top performer among provincial capitals and provincial-level cities for which data is publicly available.

Two product categories drove much of this export growth: shipments of automatic data processing equipment and parts jumped 388.1 per cent, while integrated circuits rose 251 per cent. Together, these categories accounted for 76.5 per cent of total exports. Zeng Gang, an economics professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai, noted that the surge reflects booming demand for chips used in artificial intelligence computing, alongside Xi'an's decade-long investment in the memory chip sector.

Operations by Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology in Xi'an stand out as immediate drivers. Samsung's Xi'an facility is its only overseas memory-chip fabrication plant, producing about 40 per cent of the group's NAND flash memory chips. The company invested 465.4 billion South Korean won (US$351 million) in the facility last year, a 67.5 per cent increase from the previous year. Micron announced plans in 2023 to invest more than 4.3 billion yuan in Xi'an over multiple years for acquisitions and new packaging-and-testing facilities.

Despite United States-led export restrictions on certain chipmaking equipment destined for China, both companies have continued investing in their Chinese operations. Official data showed that foreign-invested enterprises in Xi'an recorded 588.67 billion yuan in imports and exports for the first nine months, an increase of 174 per cent, representing 77 per cent of the city's total trade volume. The China-Europe Railway Express (Xi'an) was also cited as an indispensable pillar behind the rise.