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China becomes the world's largest exporter

By Mike Hanlon
April 05, 2010
China becomes the world's largest exporter
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World trade suffered the biggest decline in more than 70 years in 2009, but is set to rebound with 9.5% growth in 2010, according to the WTO. The global economic crisis sparked a 12.2% contraction in the volume of global trade, though measured in US dollars, global exports fell by a whopping 23% from the 2008 peak, due mainly to falling oil prices and a sharp contraction in global demand for all types of goods, especially consumer durables (e.g. automobiles) and investment goods (e.g. industrial machinery).

Though China's exports fell by 16% in value in 2009, China finally became the world's largest exporter in the same year, a mantle it can be expected to hold for the foreseeable future.

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6 comments
Mike Hanlon
Mike Hanlon
As a photojournalist, Mike’s work has been published in a dozen languages across 20+ countries. He has edited or managed over 75 different print publications, each with a different target audience: sports, automotive, advertising, marketing, design, ad infinitum. Mike has been working in the internet for more than 25 years and was the veteran of five internet start-ups before founding New Atlas in 2002.

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Thank You for sharing the information

www.bigseotechniques.com
guru crazy
Now if we can only stop the flood of often unusable counterfeits and fakes coming out of china that would be worth reporting.
Stein
As Cina matures as a manufacturer, it will most likely follow a similar path as other now more developped economies. Japan was once seen as a producer of cheap sh*t, as Cina is seen now. Camera brands like Nikon, Canon, Olympus and Rikoh are now undeniably very strong brands by their own merit, but they all started up making cheap copies of German Leica, Contax, Rollei, Voigtländer, etc. As the wealth from Cinese commercial success inevitably tricles down into its society, it will change too, similarly. I think that the non cooperative part of Cinese business that we complain about, will shrink by itself along with this development.
A more important point: From the table of the biggest exporters in this article, it\'s easy to notice that the apparent main message here is totally misleading: Cina is now the worlds biggest exporter, slightly ahead of Germany and the US. But this is not an informative way to look at world economy. The \"United States\", of course means they are really several countries operating as one. China is the same. Over 200 million Chinese don\'t understand Mandarin, which is what we call Cinese. There are about 8 big mutually unintelligible language groups and more than 10 different ethnic groups.
EU is also a much smaller area than either. It has several times the population of the US, but far fewer than China. So, for the type of comparison that is the point in this article, the European Union must economy wise of course be seen as one entity every bit as much as these two. Just picking numbers from the list in the article I find 8 of the EU nations, but these few together export more than 3 times what China does. 3612 versus 1202. Adding the rest of the Union would increase that number notably.
This is not at all a new development. For hundreds of years, possibly very much more, Europe has been the dominating hub of \"western culture\", which now might be seen as the one \"ruling\" the world, for good or for bad... The very large number of people and the even larger economical and intellectual resources within Europe, is the source of this dominance. If this will continue, I have no way to tell, but I\'d be willing to bet a lot for it staying more or less that way at least for the duration of our lives. The reasons for this dominating role will not vaporize very quickly, but of course they are not permanent properties either...
Whoever wants to be paranoid, seing China taking over everything, well, go ahead please yourselves. I\'d rather look at which dominance EU and US has in the Cinese economy. And also look at what is in the interest of both Cina and all other powers in our present world. Fear in this context seems rather misplaced.
Anumakonda Jagadeesh
The way China is advancing,it is almost termed as world economic power. BRIC(Brazil,Russia,India and China) are a force to reckon with as they constituite 40 percent of world population and 15 % of GDP.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Bob Anderson
Stein, How do you form the idea that the US is \'several countries operating as one\'?
Diolt Directory
Truly china is dominating & overwhelm on world\'s market. It is the big succession in short time..
Regards
www.diolt.cm