China Trade Tracker In this report we provide an outlook of China's trade structure and its evolution in the last ten years from 2000 to 2010. We use Comtrade data to analyze the evolution of exports and imports, the main trade partners, the main products exported and imported by China and the sectors that showed the best growth performance in the period. Evolution of trade 2000/2010 The graph below shows the evolution of China total exports to the world from 2000 to 2010. We can see the impressive growth in exports experienced by the country in the period. Total export grew almost by a factor of eight with a slight decrease in 2009 following the financial crisis. The second graph below shows the evolution of China total imports from the world. Here as well we can see a constant increase during the period. Imports however grew less than exports implying a strong improvement of the trade balance as shown in the third graph. The trade balance peaked at an almost 400 billion surplus in 2008 to only slightly decrease from to 2009.
Main trade partners 2000/2010 The next graph looks at China's main export destinations in the period. The most important market for China's products is the US which accounts for 30% of total exports. Japan, which accounted for about 20% of total exports in 2000, decreases its importance to account for around 10% of total exports at the end of the period. Exports to India show the greatest increase in the period.
The main import partners see the predominance of regional partners as Japan, Korea, Thailand and Malaysia. The US accounts for around 10% of total imports with a declining trend since 2000. This last feature if compared with Chinas exports to the US shows the growing imbalance between the two countries. Main sectors/products Having analyzed the evolution of China's aggregate trade flows and its main trading partners we now move to a more disaggregated analysis of the main industries/products which compose China's trade in 2010. The first table below shows the top 10 exports in 2010 at the 2-digit level. The first two sectors, machinery and electronics, account for more than 40% of total exports in 2010.
In terms of imports we can see in the next table that China mainly imports electronics components, fuels, machinery and other natural resources as copper. It is interesting to notice that the two main export sectors, machinery and electronics, also figure among the main imports. This could be a signal of ongoing intra-industry trade.
Looking at a highly disaggregated 6-digit level the main products exported are some specific electronics and machinery products. The most exported product is portable computers (847130) followed by radio and TV apparatus (852520) and parts and accessories for computers (847330). Other important export products are related to the phone industry (851780 and 851790). It appears clear that China has been very successful in entering the growing high-tech sector at least for assembling and parts and components.
If we look at the evolution of the top 2010 exports at the 2-digit level we see the impressive growth of the machinery and electronic sectors from 2000 to 2010. The same trend can be seen at a more disaggregated level where portable computers show an impressive growth from 2000 becoming the top exported product. Telephony products also show an important growth in the second half of the decade when they enter the export top ten.
The Machinery and Electronics sectors Given the importance of the machinery and electronics sector for China's exports we can look at the main players in those two markets. For Machinery the graph below shows the ten main exporters in the 2000/2010 period. We can see how China increases significantly its share of world exports to become the main world machinery exporter in 2010. The countries that show the biggest reduction in machinery exports are the US, the UK and Japan. The electronics sector shows a similar pattern but with different players. China is also in this sector the main world exporter in 2010 with an impressive growth form 2000. Again, US, Japan and UK experience an important reduction in their electronics exports. The rest of the players in this sector are concentrated in the Asian region with Malaysia, Korea, Singapore and other Asian countries all having an important presence. Compared with the machinery sector the electronics sector is characterized by a higher presence of emerging countries showing that in this sector reallocation of production form traditional industrial economies has been faster.
For the two sectors we can look at the evolution of the revealed comparative advantages between 2000 and 2010 for the main players as shown in the next two graphs. Clearly all main exporters also have strong comparative advantages. In both sectors China shows an increasing trend in the revealed comparative advantages. In the electronics sector other emerging countries as Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia and Other Asian countries seem to show a growing trend in comparative advantages.
The IIT at the 2-digit sector level show a very high degree of intra-industry trade with the rest of the world however with a decreasing trend since 2000. The intra-industry trade is higher in the electronics sector.
The vertical intra-industry specialization indicator shows that this is happening mainly in the machinery sector where the indicator is fairly high and slightly increasing across time. For the electronics sector vertical intra-industry specialization seems to be lower.