Global Reliance on Chinese Manufacturing

China’s strict COVID policies have contributed to global supply disruptions and raised concerns over global reliance on Chinese manufacturing. This briefing examines the importance of Chinese manufacturing at global, country, sectoral, and product levels. It finds that, since 2002, China’s share as the source of global imports of capital and intermediate goods, as well as high- and medium-high-tech manufacturing goods, has grown rapidly. The world notably relies on certain Chinese manufacturing sectors such as textiles and certain Chinese manufactured goods such as laptops. And the reliance of global markets on Chinese manufacturing is likely to be substantially higher than what is indicated by merchandise trade statistics for manufacturing goods