Imports from China as a share of total imports
What you should know about this indicator
- This indicator shows how much of a country’s merchandise imports are sourced from China, expressed as a percentage of country´s total imports.
- Imports are valued on a CIF basis (Cost, Insurance, and Freight). This means the values include the cost of the goods, as well as the transport and insurance costs to deliver them to the importing country's border.
- The measure covers goods only, not services such as software, tourism, or financial services.
- It highlights how central China is as a supplier of goods to the country.
- A higher percentage means stronger dependence on that partner for imports.
- This measure is useful for assessing the diversification of import sources and for spotting vulnerabilities in supply chains if reliance on a single partner is high.
What you should know about this indicator
- This indicator shows how much of a country’s merchandise imports are sourced from China, expressed as a percentage of country´s total imports.
- Imports are valued on a CIF basis (Cost, Insurance, and Freight). This means the values include the cost of the goods, as well as the transport and insurance costs to deliver them to the importing country's border.
- The measure covers goods only, not services such as software, tourism, or financial services.
- It highlights how central China is as a supplier of goods to the country.
- A higher percentage means stronger dependence on that partner for imports.
- This measure is useful for assessing the diversification of import sources and for spotting vulnerabilities in supply chains if reliance on a single partner is high.
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
We calculated the share of imports from China by dividing the value of CIF imports from that country by total CIF imports from the World, then multiplying by 100.
Reuse this work
- All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Imports from China as a share of total imports”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Diana Beltekian, and Max Roser (2018) - “Trade and Globalization”. Data adapted from International Monetary Fund. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250912-093643/grapher/share-of-total-imports-of-goods-that-comes-from-china.html [online resource] (archived on September 12, 2025).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
International Monetary Fund (2025) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
International Monetary Fund (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Imports from China as a share of total imports” [dataset]. International Monetary Fund, “International Trade in Goods (by partner country) (IMTS)” [original data]. Retrieved September 18, 2025 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250912-093643/grapher/share-of-total-imports-of-goods-that-comes-from-china.html (archived on September 12, 2025).