From “Chinese Export Boom in Evidence at Trade Show”:

By keeping China’s currency, the renminbi, tightly yoked to the weak and weakening dollar, Beijing had made Chinese exports increasingly competitive around the world.

“We are very confident,” said Liu En Tian, the marketing manager of the Huasheng Jiangquan Group, a manufacturer of ceramic tiles in Linyi City. “Already the buyers who are coming this morning are more than last year.”

Like those of many Chinese manufacturers, his company’s exports fell by nearly half last winter because of the global economic slowdown, but they are now down only 20 percent from their peak more than a year ago because of a surge in sales to South America and the Middle East. “The economy will get better very soon” around the world, Mr. Liu said.

But the atmosphere was markedly different in two halls reserved for non-Chinese exporters, amid a mishmash of emblematic exports from 35 countries: designer housewares from Italy, rugs from India, bird’s nest soup from Malaysia and lawyers from the United States.

European exporters were despondent that their products were being priced out of Asian markets because of the relatively dear euro. Americans were witnessing firsthand the changing hierarchy of the global economy.

China is no longer content to put its exports in containers and ship them to foreign ports, leaving the distribution and other moneymaking activities to others.

David J. Yang, a lawyer from San Francisco at the Canton fair, said his law firm had been receiving more and more questions from Chinese companies on how to buy American real estate and how to comply with American laws on imports, immigration and employment.

“Now they are changing the mode — they are looking around and they can expand,” he said.

Wholesalers and distributors from dozens of countries snapped up brochures and business cards, as Chinese exporters said they were convinced that sales were finally rebounding. But the rising demand was from Europe and, especially, from emerging markets, with relatively modest gains from the United States.

As exporters here reviewed their orders for the coming months, they described a consistent pattern: Sales to emerging markets were recovering rapidly, demand from Europe was starting to rebound as the Chinese currency fell against the euro, and buying interest from the United States remained fairly weak.

Read the complete article, “Chinese Export Boom in Evidence at Trade Show” at the New York Times.

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A WTO spokesperson said the two countries remain in very close competition, and it’s too soon to tell if China or Germany will be the largest exporter for the entire year of 2009 – it depends on exchange rates and the rate of economic recovery in each country.

For more information visit the Journal of Commerce or the World Trade Organization.

This is a topical example of ‘related party trade‘ – when one business is simultaneously importing and exporting among itself. Note how the headline says “export” and the tagline says “import”. GM is doing both importing and exporting. Their exported car from China is also the imported item into the US while staying within GM’s possession, which presents new challenges in keeping track of compliance. If they have a system in place, they can easily transfer the data of the exported car from their Chinese branch into the US branch’s system, which will then identify it as an import.

Hopefully, the cost savings they realize by building their products in China will assist in reviving the company from the brink of bankruptcy. Without a company, the union members won’t be employed, either. Read the complete article at the Telegraph.