At weekends I like to walk. Walk and, if I can manage it, reflect. Yesterday I headed north and east beyond Beijing’s fourth ring road, walking beside canals, through well-landscaped districts of new apartment blocks and through other places where the city is ramshackle and half formed, sometimes even derelict. There was the usual clanging and industriousness on the construction sites. A less common sight was two blacksmiths with a portable, coal-fired forge on a piece of open ground, beating out scrap iron into meat-cleavers. This even drew a crowd.
I thought a bit, as I walked, about statistics and how to make sense of them. For the first five months of this year, metalliferous ores and scrap metal was the UK’s largest export to China, up 6% on the same period last year. Clearly the two blacksmiths I saw were not the only two people at work in China’s iron and steel industry.
The next largest sectors for UK exports to China were power-generating machinery, general industrial machinery, road vehicles and electrical machinery. Some were up in percentage terms, some down and others steady. It was hard to pick out a trend.
Medical and pharmaceutical products, on the other hand, were up 60%, reflecting the growth opportunities in this sector (whatever the global downturn) as China presses ahead with healthcare reform.
The most spectacular increases in percentage terms were in certain food and animal products, as British processors and manufacturers develop new markets here. Look out for English Stilton, on sale here since late last year. If the statistics for the growth in exports of animal fats are reliable, then there’s a lot of it about.
Overall, UK exports of goods to China were down in sterling terms in the first half of 2009, but only by 8% over the same period last year. Chinese exports to the UK have actually risen in sterling terms, meaning that according to the UK’s own statistics bilateral trade has continued to expand.
The UK has just released its Pink Book for 2008. This is not, as the name might I suppose suggest to some, soft pornography. It is a racy compendium of official Government statistics. The statistics for exports of goods and services to China are particularly revealing. In 2008, UK exports to China reached £7.5bn, an impressive 40% increase on 2007. This reflected in part a significant upward revision of the figures for services to £2.47bn.
Break the trade figures down, and naturally the picture is rather like the North Eastern inner suburbs of Beijing. Some areas tower above others and some temporarily decline, but the overall picture is of growth.
We should look at the UK’s figures for exports to China in 2009 against the background of the rapid growth in 2008, as well as against the background of China’s own sustained economic growth. I am confident that the dip in the value of UK exports to China in the first half of this year will be short lived. Meanwhile, I in any case intend to keep walking.
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