Improving the position of Chinese enterprises in the global production chain is not only an inevitable requirement for enhancing China’s participation in the labor division of the global value chain and its real trade gains but also a necessary part of promoting the process of new industrialization and accelerating the construction of a manufacturing power?. With the deepening of China’s population aging, the slowdown of foreign trade growth has gradually become the norm. Reversing the low-end embedding mode of Chinese enterprises in the global production chain and improving real trade gains have become the main path to maintaining the momentum of export support for economic growth. Exploring the path of China’s trade power under the background of population aging is an urgent task. However, existing literature has not yet directly explored the relationship between population aging and the global production chain of Chinese enterprises. This paper is based on the World Input Output Database (WIOD), China Industrial Enterprise Database, China Customs Database, and regional population data. According to the practices of Chor, et al. (2014) and Chen Xu, et al. (2022), this study uses the export upstream index to measure the global production chain embedding position of Chinese enterprises and examines how regional population aging affects the global production chain embedding position of micro-enterprises. Empirical studies show that population aging can significantly enhance the global production chain embedding position of Chinese enterprises. Mechanism tests verify that population aging promotes a capital-biased factor input structure, stimulates endogenous R&D innovation and exogenous technology application, and promotes technological progress in enterprises. Further researches find that population aging optimizes resource reallocation within enterprises, and there is a resource reallocation pattern of “the stronger the stronger” among different export products; the population aging is also conducive to the expansion of domestic demand for enterprises, partially offsetting the decline in external demand. Compared with previous literature, the possible marginal contributions of this paper mainly lie in the following aspects: firstly, for the first time, we systematically examine how population aging affects the global production chain embedding position of Chinese enterprises at the micro level, which is a beneficial expansion of literature related to population structure changes and China’s opening-up at a higher level; secondly, the micro transmission mechanism of the impact of population aging on the global production chain embedding position of Chinese enterprises is analyzed and tested from the dimensions of factor substitution and technological progress, which helps to deepen the understanding of the causal relationship between them; thirdly, we delve into the enterprise product level to reveal the resource reallocation between products caused by population aging, enriching the researches on the resource reallocation effects of population aging. The conclusion of this paper can serve as an effective supplement to the existing literature on evaluating the economic effects and value chain accounting of population aging and has enlightening significance for how China can implement high-level opening-up in the process of population structure changes.