On 24 September 2026, The Business Times reported that Chinese ports posted their busiest week on record ahead of the Trump–Xi summit week, extending a boom in outbound shipments that some analysts read as tariff-related frontloading. Citing Ministry of Transport data, the paper said a record 7.3 million containers passed through Chinese terminals in the seven days through Sunday 20 September, up 9% from a year earlier.
The same report places the milestone in a broader September rebound: trade volumes in the first two weeks of the month were up about 6%, and a Goldman Sachs research note cited in the piece said freight leaving 20 major Chinese ports has been holding above 2025 levels. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg in September raised 2026 forecasts and now expect export growth of 17% and import growth of 22%.
Operationally for sourcing teams, the TEU print matters more than the summit narrative. Record weekly throughput into an already congested Shanghai–Ningbo complex, with Mid-Autumn starting 25 September and National Day Golden Week from 1–7 October, raises the odds of vessel bunching, delayed gate-ins, and rolled bookings. ANZ China strategist Zhaopeng Xing, quoted in the piece, said tariff uncertainty was already a frontloading factor for US import demand in August — so treat late-September China loads as time-sensitive, not as a normal weekly cycle.