A century of progress in access to primary education

This Data Insight is the second of a three-part series on China’s role in global trade, drawing on new writing we added this week to our Trade and Globalization topic page.

China’s central role in merchandise trade is the result of a large change that has taken place in just a few decades. This change has been especially large in Africa and South America.

In 1990, most African countries imported mainly from Europe, and most South American imports came from North America. Today, Asia is the top source of imports for both regions, primarily due to the rapid growth of trade with China.

The chart here focuses on Ethiopia, a country that illustrates this shift. Home to around 130 million people, it is one of Africa’s largest countries and has experienced rapid economic growth in recent decades.

In the early 1990s, over 40% of Ethiopia’s imports came from Europe, while very little came from China. Since then, the roles of China and Europe have almost reversed: imports from China now account for one-third of Ethiopia’s total imported goods.

This Data Insight is the first of a three-part series on China’s role in global trade, drawing on new writing we added this week to our Trade and Globalization topic page.

Over the past two decades, China’s role in global trade has expanded substantially. It has become a central hub, particularly through growing relationships with many lower and middle-income countries.

The map here shows how China ranks as a source of imports into each country. A rank of 1 means that China is the largest source of merchandise goods (by value) that a country buys abroad.

In 2024, China was the top source of imported goods for around two-thirds of countries worldwide. This includes nearly all of Asia, much of Africa and Latin America, and parts of Europe.

In many countries, China has overtaken the United States as the largest origin of their imported goods. This shift has occurred relatively recently, mainly over the past two decades.

Despite the world’s immense progress against child mortality, in some of the poorest countries, one in ten children still dies. That’s a level last seen in the richest countries in the middle of the 20th century.

The chart shows the nine countries, all located in Africa, where this is the reality today. In Niger, more than 11 out of every 100 children die before the age of five. In the European Union, the child mortality rate is more than twenty times lower.

In 1961, around two chickens were slaughtered per person globally each year. As many countries grew richer — and richer countries tend to eat more meat — global demand for chicken increased.

Since then, the number of chickens slaughtered per person has quadrupled. On average, 9 chickens are killed each year for every person in the world. Chickens have also become much heavier, so the amount of meat eaten in kilograms has grown even faster.

Life is short and painful for many farmed animals. Global estimates suggest that most are raised in factory farms. In the United States, around 99% of livestock comes from them.

One of the starkest expressions of global inequality is a child’s chance of survival. In 2023, 2.84 million children in Africa died before reaching their fifth birthday, giving the continent the highest child mortality rate of any region (5.9%).

The chart above shows a simple hypothesis: how many more African children would reach the age of five if it had the same child mortality rates as other regions?

If conditions in Africa improved enough to match Asia’s current child mortality rate (2%), 1.9 million of these 2.84 million children would survive.

If the child mortality rate were to drop to the European rate (0.4%), then 2.64 million children would be saved each year.

Almost 20,000 Americans were murdered in 2023.

The chart shows the homicide rates among male and female victims. Men were 2.7 times more likely to die by homicide than women.

We can see that for men, most of these murders were committed by friends, neighbors, acquaintances, or strangers (shown as “Other” in the chart) rather than a partner or family member. The opposite is true for women: intimate partners are the biggest threat.

Because the risks are different, the most effective responses may differ too. For women, reducing intimate partner violence is a key priority. For men, prevention is more often tied to crime, gangs, and violence among acquaintances or strangers.

The 1970s were a decade shaped by fears about overpopulation. As the world’s most populous country, China was never far from the debate. In 1979, China designed its one-child policy, which was rolled out nationally from 1980 to curb population growth by limiting couples to having just one child.

By this point, China’s fertility rate — the number of children per woman — had already fallen quickly in the early 1970s, as you can see in the chart.

While China’s one-child policy restricted many families, there were exceptions to the rule. Enforcement differed widely by province and between urban and rural areas. Many couples were allowed to have another baby if their first was a girl. Other couples paid a fine for having more than one. As a result, fertility rates never dropped close to one.

In the last few years, despite the end of the one-child policy in 2016 and the government encouraging larger families, fertility rates have dropped to one. The fall in fertility today is driven less by policy and more by social and economic changes.

This chart shows the total fertility rate, which is also affected by women delaying when they have children. Cohort fertility tells us how many children the average woman will actually have over her lifetime. In China, this cohort figure is likely higher than one, but still low enough that the population will continue to shrink.