After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, it adhered to the principle of independence and self-reliance, and gradually carried out foreign economic and trade exchanges. However, due to the constraints of the international political environment and the domestic planned economic system at that time, foreign trade developed relatively slowly. In 1978, China entered a new era of reform and opening up. Vigorously developing foreign trade has become an important way for China to speed up its modernization drive, change its backwardness, promote economic development and improve its overall national strength. The volume of trade in goods is one of the largest in the world. In 1978, China's total import and export of goods was only US $20.6 billion, ranking 32nd in the world trade in goods, accounting for less than 1% of the total. In 2010, China's total import and export of goods reached US $2,974 billion, a 143-fold increase over 1978, with an average annual growth of 16.8 percent. China has become the world's largest exporter and second largest importer of goods for two consecutive years. The structure of trade in goods has undergone fundamental changes. The structure of China's export commodities changed from primary products to manufactured goods in the 1980s, and from textile products to mechanical and electrical products in the 1990s. Since the beginning of the new century, the proportion of exports of high-tech products represented by electronics and information technology has been expanding. In addition to state-owned enterprises, foreign trade operators also include foreign-invested enterprises, private enterprises, and so on. The total import and export volume of the latter two has exceeded that of state-owned enterprises. From the 1980s to the beginning of this century, China's processing trade flourished and became half of its foreign trade. Form a comprehensive and diversified import and export market pattern. Since the reform and opening up, China has developed foreign trade in all directions and established trade relations with most countries and regions in the world. Trading partners have grown from dozens of countries and regions in 1978 to 231 countries and regions at present. The European Union, the United States, ASEAN, Japan and BRICS countries have become China's major trading partners. Since the beginning of the new century, China's trade with emerging markets and developing countries has maintained rapid growth. The international competitiveness of trade in services has been continuously enhanced. After its accession to the WTO, China's trade in services has entered a new stage of development, with rapid expansion of scale and gradual optimization of structure, and ranks among the highest in the world. The service trade in tourism, transportation and other fields is growing steadily, and the cross-border services in construction, communications, insurance, finance, computer and information services, royalties and royalties of proprietary rights, consulting and other fields as well as the outsourcing of undertaking services are growing rapidly. Foreign trade, together with domestic investment and consumption, has become the three major engines of China's economic growth.