China topples US to become the world's biggest trader
China surpassed the US to become the worlds biggest trading nation last
year as measured by the sum of exports and imports, ending the US supremacy
in global commerce that emerged after the end of World War II in 1945.
US exports and imports last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the US Commerce
Department said yesterday. Chinas customs administration reported last
month that the countrys total trade in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion.
China had a $231.1 billion annual trade surplus while the US had a trade
deficit of $727.9 billion.
Chinas emergence as the biggest global trading nation gives it increasing
influence, threatening to disrupt regional trading blocs as it becomes the
most important commercial partner for countries including Germany, which
will export twice as much to China by the end of the decade as it does to
neighbouring France, said Goldman Sachs Jim ONeill.
For so many countries around the world, China is becoming rapidly the most
important bilateral trade partner, ONeill, chairman of Goldman Sachss
asset management division and the economist who bound Brazil to Russia,
India and China to form the BRIC investing strategy, said. At this kind of
pace by the end of the decade many European countries will be doing more
individual trade with China than with bilateral partners in Europe.
China began focusing on trade and foreign investment to boost its economy
after decades of isolation under Chairman Mao Zedong. Economic growth
averaged 9.9 percent a year from 1978 through 2012. China became the worlds
biggest exporter in 2009, while the US remains the biggest importer, taking
in $2.28 trillion in goods last year compared with Chinas $1.82 trillion of
imports. HSBC forecast last year that China would overtake the US as the top
trading nation by 2016.
China was last considered the leading economy during the height of the Qing
dynasty. The difference is that in the 18th century, the Qing Empire --
unlike rising Britain -- didnt focus on trade. The Emperor Qianlong told
King George III in a 1793 letter that we possess all things. I set no value
on objects strange or ingenious, and I have no use for your countrys
manufactures.
More Involved
Now China is the biggest energy user, has the worlds biggest car market and
has the worlds largest foreign currency reserves.
The trade figures underscore the need to draw China further into the global
financial and trading architecture that the U.S. helped create, ONeill
said.
One way or another we have to get China more involved in the global
organizations of today and the future despite some of their own reluctance,
said ONeill said, mentioning Chinas inclusion in the International
Monetary Funds Special Drawing Rights currency basket. To not have China
more symbolically and more importantly actually central to all these things
is just increasingly silly.
Last month Chinas trade expanded more than estimated, with exports rising
25 percent from a year earlier and imports increasing 28.8 percent,
government data released yesterday showed. Chinas trade figures in January
and February are distorted by the week-long Lunar New Year holiday that fell
in January of last year and started today.
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni na Dk. Kiiza Besigye Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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