Reports of the demise of Chinese exports are greatly exaggerated

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The received wisdom currently says that because input costs in China – labour, land and energy – are steeply rising, consumer goods manufacturers are leaving for lower cost destinations. Here’s the counter-argument: in terms of value of exports, China’s outbound traffic is growing; it is progressively removing low-value, high-polluting industries from its industrial profile; and anyway, the countries it is losing some of its production bases to are affected by the same inflationary pressures.