China Recruiting Blog

Confucian in Their Own Way – Part II What Kind of Trading Partner Will China Be?

What kind of a trading partner will China be?

I took some numbers from Trading Economics and you can find Japan’s number here and China’s numbers here and Germany’s number’s here and America’s numbers here.

Using the nominal GDP of each of these countries, I then multiplied their export numbers to make all their economies as large as America’s, so we could see how prone each of these countries is to import.  I got the GDP numbers from Wikipedia here.

At US economy size, monthly imports in billions of  US$ are like this.

US   231

China 334

Japan 163

Germany 450

Japan is a mountain island with no natural resources, and so should be a huge importer, but comes in last due to their national psyche of not buying foreign finished products and perhaps also because they are physically separated.

Germany is clearly the most, and this is partly because of its smaller size and the economies all around them that they trade with very conveniently in the European Union. At minimum, it shows Germans will buy outside their borders.

China and America are both big countries who have a lot of internal trade and are largely separated from other countries physically to a similar degree.  All cultural factors being the same they should have the same tendency to import.  Results show that China had 45% more propensity to import than America who has been the buyer for the world. China’s economy is half the US economy now, but if they reach parity with us, they will be the buyer for the world.

This is the future, and it bears taking notice. Getting involved in China is not that hard, but it does take some focus to do well. The potential is great and it is why the world’s largest companies are heavily invested in the market here.

Thoughts?