By Claire Fu, Ellen Zhang and Josh Arslan
Jan 20 (Reuters) - China sold more goods to the world than ever in 2025, but export saleswoman Aimee Chen says it was the hardest of her roughly two-decade career.
After U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff hikes led to U.S. orders plunging by a third, Chen's pet products company moved to diversify geographies, chasing new and often lower-income markets like South America. The response mirrored China's official trade policy, which led to a record $1.2 trillion
surplus for 2025 despite new trade barriers.
Reuters interviews with 14 salespeople working on the frontlines of China's export diversification push, however, reveal the costs and caveats behind the rosy headline trade figures.
Four of the salespeople said that orders from the new markets were often smaller in volume and less lucrative than U.S. sales, resulting in lower commissions and pay. Government data show profits at China's industrial firms fell 13.1% year-on-year in November, the fastest pace in over a year.
Many of the employees also described longer working hours as well as greater intensity and uncertainty amid the export boom.
"I'm very anxious," said Chen, adding that she had recently experienced stress symptoms like hair loss and insomnia.
Mingwei Liu, director at the Center for Global Work and Employment at Rutgers University, said that China's export strategy in alternative markets depended on firms chasing high volumes of cheap orders. Companies that succeed often give clients longer payment cycles and bear higher default risks, he said.
"This market reorientation increases the labour intensity, the emotional burden and income uncertainty faced by workers in export sales," Liu said.
China's commerce ministry and human resources ministry, as well as the office which manages the cabinet's media queries, did not respond to requests for comment.
NEW MARKETS, NEW PROBLEMS
China and the U.S. have grown increasingly interconnected since Beijing's 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization. Their relationship has also become more imbalanced, with their respective economic policies favouring production in the former country and consumption in the latter.
Some American retailers and Chinese producers have said they developed relationships that were so close that they could anticipate each other's needs and red lines, making deals feel almost automatic.
Chen, for instance, described her past interactions with U.S. retailers in largely glowing terms. Clients in the world's largest economy were often "easy-going" and signed deals quickly, she said.
By contrast, customers in new markets like to haggle on price, she said.
Chinese shipments to the U.S. fell 20% in 2025, though it remains a top export destination. Shipments rose 25.8% to Africa, 7.4% to Latin America, 13.4% to Southeast Asia and 8.4% to the European Union last year.
While Washington and Beijing have had previous trade disputes, tensions escalated after Trump took office at the start of 2025. He raised tariffs to over 100% in April, before partially reversing and settling for a fragile detente.
His re-election sent China's export-oriented industrial complex into a rat race for foreign demand across the world.
Monica Chen, who has been selling auto parts for more than a decade in the eastern Zhejiang province, had long relied on email to keep business going. But with U.S. tariffs in place, she's had to fight harder to win business. That means ramping up business travel to as much as three times a month and cold-calling prospects.
"It's very hard to develop new markets, they are basically saturated," said Monica, who isn't related to Aimee Chen.
Her company ultimately responded by cutting prices to undercut other Chinese firms that are also looking for buyers abroad.
The firm's orders were down a third in value from 2024, Monica said.
WORK HARDER, EXPECT LESS
With profits falling, companies have placed pressure on their sales agents.
Cici Lv, 24, who has sold electric bicycle batteries since 2022 from the southern city of Shenzhen, earns about 5,000 yuan ($717) per month - not much more than workers in the factories that produce such units.
But while workers' shifts come to an end, Lv said she is constantly on the clock talking to foreign clients.
One of her peers, Rowan Wang, a sales rep for an exporter of agricultural equipment in eastern China, summed up the demands as "if we're alive, we have to reply."
Five of the salespeople also described struggles to manage less-affluent clients in markets with which they have little familiarity.
Lv said she traded messages with one client for months, discussing everything from news events to lunch choices and religion. He eventually ordered just one battery, earning Lv a commission of less than $2.
A review of the top 100 most liked export-related posts on social media platform RedNote in the six months to mid-January found 37 that raised complaints about heightened job stress. Another six complained about unprofessional client interactions.
"Sometimes it messes with your mind," said Lv, who said she's fielded relationship proposals.
The hardship described by the sales staff may be an early warning that China's trade diversification success in 2025 could be hard to replicate in the years ahead, said Chen Bo, senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore's East Asian Institute.
Economists have long argued that China has to develop local markets if it wants to end its deflationary cycle. Weak consumption pushes Chinese producers to compete overseas, often against each other, which brings revenue into the economy but erodes profits, Chen said.
China "can’t maintain sustainable economic growth by relying on foreign markets," the academic said.
($1 = 6.9683 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Katerina Ang)
