With regard to China, the powerhouse of global
trade in recent years, the slowdown is even more
striking. The world’s largest exporter experienced
a sharp deceleration of its exports as a consequence
of the 2008–2009 economic crisis, largely due to its
reliance on demand from developed countries. The
rate of growth of China’s exports (by volume) decelerated
to 13 per cent in 2011 and to 7.2 per cent in
2012, in sharp contrast to their massive growth rate
of 27 per cent during the period 2002–2007 following
China’s accession to the World Trade Organization
(WTO). This was the first time since the East Asian
crisis in the late 1990s that China’s export growth
was slower than that of its GDP. Concomitantly, in
2012, the growth of China’s imports decelerated to
5.9 per cent by volume and to 4.3 per cent by value,
from 19 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively, between
2002 and 2007. As a result, only regions exporting a
large proportion of primary commodities (i.e. Africa,
West Asia and, to a lesser extent, Latin America)
saw a significant increase in their exports to China
in 2012, both by volume and value.