Morgan Stanley: China's Global Export Share Expected to Rise to 16.5% by 2030
nashnova research
Morgan Stanley's latest report says China's share of global exports will climb from 15% to 16.5% by 2030 — tariff walls keep rising, yet China's weight in global supply chains keeps growing.
Years of tariffs later — why is China's export share still climbing?
Morgan Stanley's core argument: measuring China's influence by bilateral trade volumes misses the point. The real metric is how much Chinese value-added sits inside each economy's imports (value-added = the portion of a product's worth actually created in China).
Since 2017, Chinese value-added as a share of other economies' imports has risen by roughly 2 percentage points, spanning most manufacturing sectors.
This means → protectionism has rerouted trade flows but has not reduced China's actual weight in global manufacturing.
U.S. direct imports from China were slashed by more than half — so why hasn't the "China content" dropped?
China's share of direct U.S. imports fell from ~22% in 2017 to ~8% today — a 14-point drop that looks dramatic on the surface.
Yet Morgan Stanley estimates U.S. imports still contained 15.4% Chinese value-added in 2024, roughly the same as around 2018.
In plain terms = the "country-of-origin" label changed, but crack open the product and the Chinese parts and value inside haven't shrunk.
The gap comes from indirect channels: about 25% of Chinese value-added in U.S. imports now enters via third economies, up from ~18% in 2016. In 2024 that indirect flow totalled roughly $157 billion, with Mexico, Vietnam, and Taiwan together accounting for about 47% (~$73 billion).
Is this just simple transshipment?
Morgan Stanley says no. Real production capacity and final assembly have moved to third countries in some cases.
But those destinations still rely heavily on Chinese intermediate goods and capital goods (intermediates = semi-finished components; capital goods = the machinery used to make things).
This means → the factory moved, but the supply chain's centre of gravity did not. Chinese-created value stays embedded in the final product.
How deep is emerging-market dependence on China?
Chinese value-added in other Asian economies' imports rose from 16.6% in 2017 to 21.5% in 2024 — a 4.9-point jump. ASEAN economies and Taiwan saw the sharpest increases; some now carry China content of 24%–37%.
India: despite progress in electronics manufacturing, about 52% of Chinese value-added goes into domestic capital expenditure, up ~6 points from 2017.
Vietnam: roughly 55% of imported Chinese value-added feeds into exports, up ~5 points from 2017.
This reflects a structural loop: more overseas factories → more demand for Chinese capital goods and intermediates → China shifts from "final-product maker" to upstream supplier for the global manufacturing system.
Which sectors has China penetrated deepest — and how far has U.S. "de-risking" actually gone?
Since 2017, China has gained global import value-added share in 10 of 13 broad manufacturing sectors.
Key 2024 figures: electrical and optical equipment — Chinese value-added at roughly 33%; machinery and equipment — ~24%; transport equipment — ~10%.
The U.S. achieved a more noticeable reduction in China content in only a handful of sectors — electrical and optical equipment, chemicals, leather goods, and footwear. Put simply = U.S. de-risking is sector-selective, not a full decoupling.
What does Morgan Stanley see ahead — and what's the difference between "Made in China" and "Made by China"?
Morgan Stanley identifies four pillars sustaining China's deepening global role: focus on high-growth sectors, integrated supply chains, R&D and innovation spending, and a large pool of highly skilled workers.
The report highlights that as industry enters the era of embodied AI, China has already established a dominant position in robotics and humanoid robots.
This means → China's role is shifting from "Made in China" to "Made by China" — even when a product is assembled elsewhere, it contains an ever-larger share of Chinese value-added. This structural shift makes the real cost of supply-chain reorganisation far higher than policymakers expect.
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