Trade structure reflects the development of a country’s industries and the comparative advantage in the world. Optimizing trade structure will help improve international competitiveness, consolidate industrial layout and deepen trade cooperation with other countries. This paper selects six key nodes from 1995 to 2018, introduces technical elements to measure the value added of export products, and studies the changes of China’s foreign trade structure and spatial pattern since the reform and opening up. The results show that: (1) China’s export product groups are gradually moving to the middle and high-level areas, but the product groups with the largest export share are still concentrated in the low value-added areas; The share of capital output has increased, and the import of consumer goods has been at a low level for a long time; In the spatial pattern, the contact strength between China and the rest of the world is increasing, but it is weakening in North America and Europe. (2) Information technology, system quality, education and infrastructure construction are crucial to the upgrading of a country’s trade structure. Finally, this paper provides suggestions for the optimization and upgrading of China’s trade structure and high-level opening up.