BEIJING (AP) – Already the biggest auto market and steel maker, China
edged past Germany in 2009 to become the top exporter, yet another sign
of its rapid rise and the spread of economic power from West to East.
Total 2009 exports were more than $1.2 trillion, China's customs agency
said Sunday. That was ahead of the 816 billion euros ($1.17 trillion)
forecast for Germany by its foreign trade organization, BGA.
China's new status is mostly symbolic but highlights its growing
presence as an industrial power, major buyer of oil, iron ore and other
commodities and, increasingly, as an investor and key voice in managing
the global economy.
Its ability to unseat longtime export leader Germany reflects the
ability of agile, low-cost Chinese manufacturers to keep selling abroad
even as other exporters have been hammered by a slump in global demand.
China overtook Germany in 2007 as the third-largest economy and is
expected to unseat Japan as No. 2 behind the United States as early as
this year. Its trade boom has helped Beijing pile up the world's
biggest foreign currency reserves at more than $2 trillion.
The global crisis speeded China's rise up the ranks as a 4 trillion
yuan ($586 billion) government stimulus kept its economy and
consumption growing while the U.S. and other markets struggled with
recession. Chinese economic growth rose to 8.9 percent in the third
quarter of 2009 and the government is forecasting a full-year expansion
of 8.3 percent.
On Friday, data released by an industry group showed China topped the
slumping United States in auto sales in 2009 – a status industry
analysts a few years ago did not expect it to achieve until as late as
2020.
Economists and Germany's national chamber of commerce said earlier the
country was likely to lose its longtime crown as top exporter.
China's exports per person are still much lower than those of Germany,
which has a much smaller population of 80 million people. China sells
low-tech goods such as shoes, toys and furniture, while Germany exports
machinery and other higher-value products. German commentators note
their country supplies the factory equipment used by top Chinese
manufacturers.
"If China grows, this pushes the world's economy – and that's good for
export-oriented Germany as well," an economist for the German Chamber
of Industry and Commerce, Volker Treier, said last month.
Of course, with 1.3 billion people, China is still one of the world's
poorest countries. It ranked 130th among economies in per capita income
in 2008, according to the World Bank.
China's trade ended 2009 with exports rebounding in December, jumping
17.7 percent after 13 months of declines, the customs agency said.
The upturn was an "important turning point" for exporters, a customs
agency economist, Huang Guohua, said on state television, CCTV.
"We can say that China's export enterprises have completely emerged from their all-time low in exports," Huang said.
Plunging demand in 2008 forced thousands of factories to close and threw millions of laborers out of work.
China's trade surplus shrank by 34.2 percent in 2009 to $196.07
billion, the customs agency said. That reflected China's stronger
demand for imported raw materials and consumer goods.
Iron ore imports rose 41.6 percent to 630 million tons, while oil
imports rose 13.9 percent to 1.4 billion barrels, the agency said.
Economists say the buying binge has been driven in part by a Chinese
effort to build up stockpiles while global prices are low.
The United States and other governments complain that part of China's
export success is based on currency controls and improper subsidies
that give its exporters an unfair advantage against foreign rivals.
Washington has imposed anti-dumping duties on imports of Chinese-made
steel pipes and some other goods, while the European Union has imposed
curbs on Chinese shoes.
The U.S. and other governments also complain that Beijing keeps its
currency, the yuan, undervalued. Beijing broke the yuan's link to the
dollar in 2005 and it rose gradually until late 2008, but has been
frozen since then against the U.S. currency in what economists say is
an effort by Beijing to keep its exporters competitive.
The dollar's weakness against the euro and some other currencies pulls
down the yuan in markets that use them and makes Chinese goods even
more attractive there, adding to China's trade surplus.