AI Demand Drives China's 72.6% Integrated Circuit Export Growth
China's exports delivered a stunning performance in the first two months of 2026, expanding 21.8% year-over-year and far exceeding forecasts. This growth was overwhelmingly powered by the global artificial intelligence investment cycle. Shipments of integrated circuits exploded by 72.6%, while exports of automatic data processing equipment rose 20.6%. Together, these two categories alone contributed 4.5 percentage points to the country's total export growth.
The surge in demand is creating significant pricing power for manufacturers. The export price of integrated circuits increased 55.7% year-over-year, substantially higher than the 13.7% growth in export volume. This robust performance created a global trade surplus of $213.6 billion for the period and helped offset an 11% decline in shipments to the U.S., as exports to the European Union increased by nearly 28%.
Asian Tech Hubs Capitalize on Global AI Investment
The export boom is not confined to mainland China, indicating a powerful regional trend centered on the AI supply chain. Other major technology exporters in East Asia reported similarly strong results. For January and February, Taiwan's exports grew by 44.5% and South Korea's by 31.3%, both propelled by soaring demand for semiconductors and computer hardware.
This synchronized growth highlights the concentration of the AI hardware supply chain in the region. In Taiwan, integrated circuits and data processing units together accounted for 34.6 percentage points of total export growth. Similarly, in South Korea, semiconductor and computer exports were responsible for 35 percentage points of its growth. This stands in sharp contrast to economies with low exposure to the AI sector, like India and Australia, which recorded minimal export growth of 0.6% and -0.9% respectively, underscoring the AI cycle as a dominant force in current global trade.
