Xiamen has developed into China's major distribution center for export and import products. In 2010 Xiamen's foreign trade surged 31.7 percent year on year to reach $57.04 billion, ranking fifth among the country's 15 sub-provincial cities. Between 1981 and 2010, Xiamen's foreign trade totaled $382.79 billion, with an average annual growth of 22.7 percent. This includes $233.63 billion in exports, representing an average annual growth of 21 percent.

Foreign trade through Xiamen Port accounts for 75 percent of Fujian Province. In 1981, there were only five foreign trade companies in Xiamen, and all state-owned that dealt with exports only. In 2010, Xiamen had 10,551 companies engaged in foreign trade and 84 of them each had an export and import value exceeding $100 million, and their total import and export value accounted for 55.5 percent of Xiamen's total. In 2010, Xiamen exported hi-tech products worth $8.61 billion, and mechanical and electrical products worth $16.7 billion. While maintaining its strong prominence in the traditional export market, Xiamen has been tapping the emerging European and African markets. By the end of 2010, the number of export destination countries had reached 54 and their total imports had accounted for 93.3 percent of the city's total exports.

Surging overseas investment

In the past three decades, Xiamen has received a steady increase in the number of investors from abroad. At the beginning, its investors were mainly from Hong Kong, Macao and Southeast Asian countries. Later, they were joined by business people from more than 70 countries and regions, including Japan, the United States, Europe and Taiwan. By the end of 2010, Xiamen had approved 9,007 foreign-invested enterprises with contractual foreign capital of $33.62 billion and paid-in foreign capital of $22.32 billion. A total of 6,504 foreign-invested enterprises have started operation.

Today, more foreign capital has been invested in capital- and technology-intensive projects rather than smaller, labor-intensive ones. Various efforts have been made to attract big foreign-invested projects, multi-nationals and hi-tech enterprises, such as Dell, ABB and Sumitomo. By the end of 2010, Xiamen had attracted 49 multinationals from the Fortune 500 list to invest in 89 projects with total contractual foreign capital of $1.94 billion.

Exchanges with Taiwan

In the past three decades, Xiamen, based on its special geographic environment and taking advantage of its historic and cultural background in exchanges with Taiwan, has energetically exploited trade cooperation and various exchanges with Taiwan, making active contributions to the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations and the reunification of the country. Xiamen has the biggest number of Taiwan-invested enterprises among all the cities in Fujian Province. Of the four investment areas by Taiwan enterprises in Fujian, three are in Xiamen. With this advantage, Xiamen has actively promoted cooperation with Taiwan in 10 industries such as advanced manufacturing, finance and outsourcing services. It has established the first national-level base of science, technology and sports cooperation and exchange with Taiwan and the first cross-Straits center of agricultural product inspection and quarantine technologies. By the end of 2010, a total of 3,112 Taiwan-invested enterprises had been approved for establishment, with contractual investment of $49.8 billion and paid-in capital of $3.26 billion. In 2010 the trade volume between Xiamen and Taiwan totaled $6.38 billion, ranking first among the coast cities in southeast China. The establishment of the Xiamen Distribution Center for Fruit from Taiwan has been completed, which is the biggest of its kind in China. In 2010 Xiamen imported 5,963 tons of fruit from Taiwan, ranking first among all mainland ports.

Moreover, Xiamen has been listed as a pilot city of cross-Straits direct chartered flights, a port of direct marine transport and a mail dispatch office for cross-Straits postal services. Xiamen Airlines became the first airline from the mainland to set up an office in Taiwan. Xiamen has launched the first direct flight to Penghu and Taichung in Taiwan, and breakthroughs have been made in direct marine transport to Kinmen and Penghu in Taiwan. Since direct passenger marine transport between Xiamen and Kinmen was opened in 2001, a total of 5.8 million passengers have used this service. With the establishment of Taiwan King Dragon Life Insurance Co. Ltd. in Xiamen, the city has become a cross-Straits regional financial service center and one of the 20 pilot cities on the Chinese mainland for cross-border renminbi settlement.

In recent years, Xiamen has become the first mainland city to send delegations of the municipal government and the municipal people's political consultative conference to Taiwan, and realized cross-Straits party exchanges at the grassroots.

Xiamen is one of the cities with the most active cross-Straits cultural exchanges. The exchange between Xiamen and Taiwan in culture, education, science and technology, health care, sports, religion and folklore is rich in content and varied in form, effectively stimulating relations between the mainland and Taiwan.