China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest manufacturing country, producing 19.8% of the world’s manufactured goods in 2010.
China overtook the US for the first time, beating the west’s manufacturing homeland, delivering US$1.995 trillion worth of manufactured goods last year compared to the US’s $US1.952 trillion, according to a study from economic research company, IHS Global Insight.
According to a report from The West Australian, China remained a long way behind the US in terms of productivity, with US workers in the manufacturing industry receiving more than eight times that of China’s workers doing similar jobs.
"In other words, the US manufacturing sector is producing roughly the same amount of output in 2010 with 11.5 million workers as opposed to its Chinese counterpart with around 100 million workers," The West Australian quoted IHS as saying.
Manufacturers’ Monthly reported earlier in the year that China’s seasonally-adjusted Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI) was booming in December and January, starting 2011 on a strong footing, with both output and new business rising steeply since.
This prompted firms to raise their input buying and allocate resources to meeting incoming new orders, with backlogs of work rising solidly, which in turn encouraged manufacturers to hire additional staff on average. Meanwhile, companies continued to pass on strong cost inflation to clients through increased output charges.
China is fast becoming the superpower in global manufacturing. Though Australian manufacturing rose in February for the first time in months, this followed a draught period for local manufacturing, with companies taking production to cheaper countries with less government taxes, such as China.
Image courtesy of The West Australian.
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