China–Latin America economic cooperation

Rapid integration with the global economy has been a leading feature of the economic rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over the past two decades. In 2007, the PRC’s trade (the sum of merchandise exports and imports) to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio reached 66.3 per cent, more than double the 1990 level of 32.6 per cent. Its share of world merchandise trade rose from 1.6 per cent to 7.2 per cent over the same period. Its share of world stock of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) rose from 1.1 per cent in 1990 to 2.2 per cent in 2007. ¹ The PRC is now the world’s third largest merchandise exporter after Germany and the United States (US), and the largest FDI recipient in the developing world. Facilitated by favorable policy reforms, improvements in transportation and communication infrastructure, low labor costs, and massive FDI inflows, the PRC has emerged as the center of global manufacturing production, serving as an important conduit for exporting manufactured products from Asia to the North American and European markets.