South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy recently quoted statistics from the World Trade Oraganization (WTO), claiming China's foreign trade volume had surpassed that of the US with a widening edge. This basically confirms China as the world's largest foreign trade nation for this year. According to a report by the Chosun llbo on July 6th, South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy quotes statistics from WTO claiming that China's foreign trade volume for the first 4 months leads the world with a total sum of $1.3311 trillion, edging past the $1.2613 trillion registered by the US. Moreover, China and the US have respectively reached $1.6763 trillion and $1.5967 trillion in trade volume for the first 5 months, with the gap becoming more and more evident. Therefore, it's almost assuring that China will become the world's largest trading partner, with the whole year taken into consideration. It's noteworthy that US trade volume totaled $1.2705 trillion compared with China's $1.1672 trillion for the first 4 months last year.

It is learnt from the WTO website that the trade volume difference between China and the US is 40 billion for the first quarter, 70 billion for the first 4 months and 80 billion for the first 5 months this year. The gap is indeed enlarging. In an earlier interview with the Global Times, the WTO chief economist Patrick Low indicated, "While China's trade in goods was $100 billion less than that of the US in 2011, it performed well in 2012 with only $15 billion behind the US. Fifteen billion US dollars is equivalent to China's trade volume of only one and a half day. At this pace, China's trade in goods will surpass that of the US before long." According to the Chosun llbo, the fact that China's exports and imports of goods have surpassed those of the US signals China's increasing status and influence in the world's economy. Last year, the US struggled to retain its leading position in the world with a slight edge over China. Back in 2008, China only ranked as the 8th biggest trading nation around the world. But it leaped to the third place in 2005 and has remained in the second place from 2010 on. After joining the WTO in 2001, China was re-put into the world trade order and later the scale of its foreign trade began to skyrocket. Entering the 21st century, China's average annual export growth rate hit 19.2%. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) once forecast that China's economy will have overtaken that of the US to become the world's largest economic power by 2016.

The report suggests that China, relying on its large share in the world trade, is expanding its "economic territory" and dominating the Asian economic integration. At present, China is trying to play a bigger role in negotiations of "10+3" (the 10 ASEAN countries plus the 3 countries of China, Japan and South Korea), and also in negotiations of RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) which includes China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India. The report also states that at the end of May, there were speculations about China's intention to join the US-led Trans-pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP). From last month on, the "trade war" between China and the EU has begun to reflect the change in China's position. After the EU imposed anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar panels, China in response started a series of CVD (countervailing duty) and anti-dumping investigations on European wines. In light of some other opinions, however, processing trade currently accounts for a significant proportion of China's overall trade and provides only modest added value . In this sense, China can not be counted as a trading power even if it becomes the world's largest trading nation.