Steven Roach writes:

Academic research by Stanford Professor Laurence Lau has, in fact, shown that only about 20% of Chinese exports to the United States reflect domestic Chinese content — while the rest consists of components and parts from China's trading partners, predominantly those elsewhere in Asia.

It turns out that China is more of an assembler than a manufacturer. While it may send a disproportionate share of its finished goods exports to the United States, that's more a reflection of China being the final point in the assembly line than anything else.

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http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5938