On Thu, 2008-05-01 at 14:33 +0530, ss wrote: > Germany carries with it a *reputation* of high quality in the same way that > China carries a reputation of low quality.
the reputation either carry among the general public isn't really that important. the reputation among actual purchasers, otoh, is unlikely to be off the mark. i'm not going to keep buying german precision engineering tools because of the reputation for high quality if they keep breaking down on me. > Neither may have anything to do with the fact that they are the biggest and > second biggest exporters. A comparison of exactly what they export, and who > the main buyers are would be a better indicator of what the exact factors > might be. one explanation for germany's export performance is statistics. export to other EU member states accounts for over 60% of germany's total exports [1]. treat that the same way as you treat california's exports to US states and german export performance wouldn't look so good, although german exports to non-EU states are growing much faster [2]. of course, if you make this distinction, you'd have to treat the EU as a single unit in world trade, in which case the EU would be the top global exporter by far; EU exports to non-EU countries in 2006 were 1.16 trillion euro (about $1.5 trillion) compared to euro 800 billion for the US and 750 bil for china. yes, this is only slightly more than germany's total exports, but excludes all intra-EU trade. explanations aren't that difficult, really. although germany has a small trade deficit with china, exports to china account for about 10% of germany's total non-EU exports. export figures reflect value, not volume. here are a couple of quotes from chinese commerce minister bo xilai, during the EU-China bra-and-sock wars a couple of years ago: "The EU and the US should spend more energy on the development of high-technology, on Airbus and Boeing, rather than quarrel with us on socks and trousers. " [4] China needs to export "800 million shirts in order to buy an [Airbus] A380". heh maybe a more interesting question would be why india's export performance is so consistently pathetic, at #17 (in 2006) with about $150 billion exported, india accounts for 1.3% of world exports, compared to 16% for the EU, and about 11% each for the US and China. (india doesn't import much either - 2% of the world total, comapred to 18% for the EU, 20% for the US and 7.5% for china). the answers aren't that hard to find, actually, and unfortunately a lot is explained by bad government policies (in india). -rishab 1. http://www.german-business-portal.info/GBP/Navigation/en/Business-Location/foreign-trade-statistics.html 2. http://tinyurl.com/5vrgwy 3. http://ec.europa.eu/trade/issues/bilateral/data.htm 4. http://cy2.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/chinanews/200506/20050600106396.html 5. http://english.people.com.cn/200505/04/eng20050504_183696.html
