The Australia-China Chamber of Commerce and Industry of New South Wales

CHAMBER REPORTS

ON RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Update on Global Trade

7 December 2001

CONTENTS

Introduction

Rankings

China’s Dependence on Major Export Markets

Dependence on Imports from China

Preliminary Trade Data for 2001

Introduction:

In the Chamber’s commentary on the “2001 White Paper on American Business in China”, produced by the American Chamber of Commerce in China (http://www.amcham-china.org.cn), we included a table showing exports, imports and total merchandise trade for the “global top 15”. At the time the commentary was prepared (24 May 2001) the most recent data-period for such a ranking was 1999.

Since then, the World Trade Organisation (http://www.wto.org) released trade data for 2000. We decided that an update of the rankings would be informative.

More specifically, the relevance of the data concerned the following points:

v China’s importance as a trading nation has been increasing steadily and that trend is expected to continue for some time.

v Australia’s ranking as a trading nation improved during the 1990s, reaching the 13th position in 1999.

Both of these points can be re-examined with the 2000 trade data. We can also use the recent data to comment further on China’s relatively high dependence on three major export markets: USA, the European Union and Japan.

Rankings:

Table 1 contains the 1999 data shown previously and Table 2 has the 2000 data. Most of the OECD countries experienced a decline in their respective shares of total trade (exports plus imports). For example, the United States had a 20.9 per cent share in 1999, and this fell to 19.9 per cent in 2000.

Table 1: Exports, Imports and Total Trade by Value (in US$ billions) and Global Share – 1999

Country		Exports		Imports		Total
		Value	Share	Value	Share	Value	Share
1	United States	695.2	16.4%	1059.1	23.6%	1754.3	20.9%
2	Extra-EU trade	795.6	18.8%	843.4	18.8%	1639.0	18.8%
3	Japan	419.4	9.9%	311.3	6.9%	730.6	8.4%
4	Canada	238.4	5.6%	220.2	4.9%	458.6	5.2%
5	China	195.2	4.6%	165.8	3.7%	360.9	4.1%
6	Hong Kong	174.4	4.1%	180.7	4.0%	355.1	4.1%
7	Mexico	136.7	3.2%	148.7	3.3%	285.4	3.3%
8	Korea	144.7	3.4%	119.8	2.7%	264.5	3.0%
9	“Chinese Taipei”	121.6	2.9%	110.7	2.5%	232.3	2.7%
10	Singapore	114.7	2.7%	111.1	2.5%	225.7	2.6%
11	Switzerland	80.4	1.9%	79.9	1.8%	160.3	1.8%
12	Malaysia	84.5	2.0%	65.0	1.4%	149.4	1.7%
13	Australia	56.1	1.3%	69.1	1.5%	125.2	1.4%
14	Russian Fed.	74.3	1.8%	41.1	0.9%	115.4	1.3%
15	Thailand	58.4	1.4%	50.3	1.1%	108.7	1.2%
Source: World Trade Organisation.

Table 2: Exports, Imports and Total Trade by Value (in US$ billions) and Global Share – 2000

Country		Exports		Imports		Total
		Value	Share	Value	Share	Value	Share
1	United States	781.1	15.7%	1257.6	23.9%	2038.7	19.9%
2	Extra-EU trade	858.9	17.3%	965.7	18.3%	1824.6	17.8%
3	Japan	479.2	9.6%	379.5	7.2%	858.7	8.4%
4	Canada	276.6	5.6%	244.8	4.6%	521.4	5.1%
5	China	249.3	5.0%	225.1	4.3%	474.4	4.6%
6	Hong Kong	202.4	4.1%	214.2	4.1%	416.6	4.1%
7	Mexico	166.4	3.3%	182.6	3.5%	349.0	3.4%
8	Korea	172.3	3.5%	160.5	3.0%	332.8	3.2%
9	“Chinese Taipei”	148.3	3.0%	140.0	2.7%	288.3	2.8%
10	Singapore	137.9	2.8%	134.5	2.6%	272.4	2.7%
11	Malaysia	98.2	2.0%	82.2	1.6%	180.4	1.8%
12	Switzerland	81.5	1.6%	83.6	1.6%	165.1	1.6%
13	Russian Fed.	105.2	2.1%	45.5	0.9%	150.7	1.5%
14	Australia	63.9	1.3%	71.5	1.4%	135.4	1.3%
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