Hong Kong Import Trade Data: $654.82B in 2023, Down 2.0%

China Supplies Two-Fifths of Hong Kong's Imports

Hong Kong imported $654.82 billion worth of goods in 2023, down 2.0% from $668.48 billion the year before. China supplied 40.0% of that total, worth $261.94 billion, by far the largest single source. An aggregated "Other Asia, nes" reporting category, covering trade partners not broken out individually in the underlying data, added 10.3% ($67.59 billion). Hong Kong's own trade authorities describe the territory as playing an important entrepot role for trade between the mainland and the rest of the world, noting that re-exports tied to mainland China account for more than 80% of Hong Kong's total re-export trade value. That helps explain why goods keep flowing in from China even though so much of what Hong Kong sells abroad also goes there: much of the same merchandise passes through the territory more than once, arriving from one direction and departing in another as part of a broader supply chain rather than staying local. That two-way flow is a defining feature of how Hong Kong's trade statistics work: a single shipment of components can register as an import when it arrives from a supplier and then register again as an export or re-export once it leaves, even if very little happens to the goods themselves while they are in the territory.

Singapore ranked third at 6.8% ($44.47 billion), and Japan followed at 5.2% ($34.03 billion). Together, China, the "Other Asia, nes" category, and Singapore, the top three suppliers, account for 57.1% of total import value. South Korea added 4.4% ($28.85 billion), the United States 4.0% ($26.25 billion), Malaysia 2.9% ($19.19 billion), and Switzerland 2.8% ($18.35 billion), likely tied to the watches and precious-metal inputs feeding Hong Kong's jewelry trade. The United Kingdom added 2.7% ($17.64 billion), and Vietnam rounded out the top ten at 2.6% ($17.11 billion).

Electronics and Jewelry Complete the Entrepot Loop

Electrical machinery and equipment led all import categories in 2023, worth $344.29 billion and accounting for 52.6% of total value, almost exactly mirroring the same category's dominance on the export side. Chips, components, and finished electronics arrive in Hong Kong from suppliers across Asia, including Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia, before much of that same merchandise moves onward, largely to mainland China. Natural and cultured pearls, precious and semi-precious stones, and precious metals ranked second at 16.8% ($110.05 billion), an even larger share of imports than the 14.2% this category holds among exports, consistent with raw gold, gems, and precious metals arriving for processing and finishing before being re-exported as jewelry and other goods, a pattern that fits Hong Kong's long-standing role as one of Asia's principal centers for gem cutting, jewelry manufacturing, and precious-metals trading.

Machinery and mechanical appliances added 10.4% ($67.97 billion), and mineral fuels contributed 2.2% ($14.54 billion), a modest share reflecting Hong Kong's limited direct energy needs relative to the scale of goods passing through its ports. Optical, photographic, and medical instruments added 2.0% ($13.23 billion), clocks and watches 1.3% ($8.39 billion), essential oils and cosmetic preparations 1.1% ($7.15 billion), and works of art, collectors' pieces, and antiques 1.0% ($6.61 billion). Plastics closed at 0.8% ($5.14 billion), and leather goods, travel bags, and similar items rounded out the top ten at 0.7% ($4.58 billion).

A Cooling Trade Cycle After the Chip Boom

Hong Kong's import total has followed nearly the same arc as its exports over the past five years. It stood at $578.59 billion in 2019, eased slightly to $573.06 billion in 2020, then jumped to a five-year high of $713.17 billion in 2021 as global demand for semiconductors and electronics surged. Imports eased to $668.48 billion in 2022 and fell a further 2.0% to $654.82 billion in 2023 as that extraordinary cycle continued to cool.

Set against the $575.04 billion Hong Kong exported the same year, this import total leaves the territory with a goods trade deficit of roughly $79.78 billion in 2023, a gap that is common for entrepot economies where the timing of re-export flows doesn't always match perfectly within a single calendar year, and where a large services trade surplus, generated by Hong Kong's finance, logistics, and professional services industries, sits entirely outside these merchandise trade figures and is not something this dataset captures. For a closer look at how individual partner countries or product categories break down year over year, the data panels above provide the full detail behind these figures.