Chinese Ambassador to Albania Pang Chunxue Publishes an Article Entitled A New Chapter for China-EU Relations

On January 24th, H.E. Ms. Pang Chunxue, Chinese Ambassador to Albania, publishes an article entitled China's Economy in 2025 Reached New High on Albanian Daily News, the largest English newspaper in Albania. The article states that China's economy in 2025 forged ahead against headwinds, moved toward innovation-led and high-quality development, and continuously served as the engine of global economic growth. The full text is as follows:

2025 is a year of profound significance in the advancement of Chinese path to modernization. In this year, China's economy forged ahead against headwinds, moving toward innovation-led and high-quality development, with all major expected targets successfully fulfilled. Here are the four words to characterize China's economic performance over the past year: stability, progress, innovation, and resilience.

I.STABILITY

In 2025, faced with drastic changes in external environment and increasing domestic challenges, China implemented more proactive and effective macro policies, which helped offset adverse external shocks and stabilize the foundation for development against headwinds. China's GDP exceeded 140 trillion yuan for the first time, an increase of 5% over the previous year. The urban surveyed unemployment rate averaged 5.2%, reflecting overall stable employment. Goods trade reached a new high, and foreign exchange reserves surpassed 3.3 trillion dollars. For a super-large economy like China, achieving such stable development is by no means easy amid intertwined risks and challenges.

II.PROGRESS

In 2025, China steadfastly pursued high-quality development, accelerated the transition from old growth drivers into new ones, and strived for solid progress in reform and opening-up. As a result, the economy displayed a positive momentum of improvement and upgrading. Reform and opening-up were deepened, with notable progress in developing a unified national market. The Private Sector Promotion Law came into effect, and comprehensive efforts to curb "involution" competition yielded tangible results. The launch of island-wide special customs operations in the Hainan Free Trade Port marked an important step toward high-standard opening-up. The proportion of the high-tech manufacturing sectors in the country's industrial output amounted to 17.1% while final consumption expenditure contributed over 50% to economic growth.  The total value of imports and exports grew by 3.8% over that of the previous year. Per capita disposable income grew by 5% in real terms, which is line with economic growth.

III.INNOVATION

In 2025, China's economy advanced toward newness. The ratio of R&D expenditure to GDP reached 2.8%, an increase of 0.11 percentage points year-on-year, surpassing the average level of OECD countries for the first time. Data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) shows that China's innovation index ranked among the world's top 10 for the first time. China has scored a steady stream of successes in cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology and brain-computer interfaces. A host of major scientific and technological achievements have emerged one after another, and the new productive forces have kept growing stronger. The added value of the above-scale digital product manufacturing industry grew by 9.3% year on year, with the output of servers and industrial robots registering rapid growth. New energy vehicles contributed more than 50% of domestic new car sales.

IV.RESILIENCE

In 2025, China's economy achieved a quantitative leap and qualitative improvement, fully demonstrating its capacity to adapt to changes, break bottlenecks, and withstand pressures amid an unstable and uncertain environment. China's economic growth rate has remained one of the highest among major economies. With its contribution to global economic growth reaches around 30%, China has become the world's most stable and reliable engine of economic growth. So far, China has become the major trading partner of more than 150 countries and regions. High-tech and high-value-added products emerged as the main driver of export growth, with the export volume increased by 13.2% year-on-year.

Looking ahead to 2026, China will continue to comprehensively deepen reform and expand high-standard opening up to unlock development dividends. China will not only be the world's factory, but also the world's market. We will continue to host events such as the China International Import Expo (CIIE), further expand imports and share development opportunities with Albania and countries around the world, so as to build an open world economy with concrete actions.