Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Vietnam are already eating into China’s share of consumer goods exports, eroding China’s position further as nearby countries increase their shares of supply chains

According to the 2023 Container Shipping Outlook by Alix Partners published in March 2023, “Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Vietnam are already eating into China’s share of consumer goods exports and foresee China’s position eroding further as nearby countries increase their shares of supply chains and as government policies and business strategies outbound momentum. Mexico and Eastern Europe stand to gain over the medium term as more and more volumes shift out of China and to neighbouring countries.”

According to the Vietnam Customs data, Vietnam’s two-way trade in February was up almost US$3 billion over January despite February being a slightly shorter month. On the other hand, China’s exports to the EU totalled RMB 552.837 billion from January to February 2023, a year-on-year decline of 5.0%.

Southeast Asia has emerged as a strong economic “partnership region” as the world looks to a more diverse sourcing and manufacturing trade strategy.

“The diversification of trade will prove to be beneficial for ocean trade because this will cause a boom to the regional trade within Asia. It will also lead to more locations adding to the direct trade from the region to North America or to Europe. So, diversification will play a role and in general, this will soak up more capacity than what we would have had on transpacific China to the USA or China to Europe alone.” shared Christian Roeloffs.