China topples US to grab top spot for high-tech exports

China has trumped the United States to become the world's leading exporter of high-tech goods.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's data, which shows China taking over last year in the export of laptop computers, mobile phones and digital cameras, highlights how fast the country has emerged as an economic power that the US and other long-industrialised countries can no longer ignore.

China exported US$180 billion ($250 billion) worth of ICT (information and communication technology) goods in 2004, compared with US exports of US$149 billion. The OECD said China was likely to have kept the newly conquered top spot this year too but it would take several months to verify.

The US was world leader in 2003 with US$137 billion of exports of ICT goods, which include video equipment and electronic components, followed by China with US$123 billion.

World Bank rankings put China as the world's seventh-largest economy.

It was recently admitted to the World Trade Organisation but is constantly at odds with Washington and Europe over cut-price exports of cheap clothes and over state currency controls which its trading rivals say distort fair price competition.

The OECD said China used to depend on Europe and the US for microchips and other components for high-tech goods, but that it was now increasingly self-sufficient and turning more to neighbours.

"The data show a shift towards more trade between China and other Asian countries, with a corresponding decline in ICT imports to this region from the European Union and the US," it said. China was now turning to suppliers in Japan, Taipei, South Korea and Malaysia.

China's Lenovo burst on to the world stage this year as the third-biggest maker of computers with the purchase of IBM's PC business, behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

What started out as a country that made most of the world's clothes and toys is no longer happy to take a back seat. It is even developing a mobile phone technology that could end up rivalling the GSM and CDMA standards.

- REUTERS