China overtakes U.S. as worlds largest IT products exporter

China is the single largest exporter of ICT goods to the United States, supplying 27 percent of all U.S. imports of these goods in 2004, up from only 10 percent in 2000. China’s ICT trade surplus with the United States stood at $34 billion in 2004 and with the European Union at $27 billion.

-read more in this OECD report

Only connect

Some may think that the news that China is now the world’s largest ICT exporter is not directly connected to homeland security. In fact, it is connected to everything. As E. M. Forster said, “Only Connect!”

Here are quotes from three observers who make the connection.

Nicholas Kristof, currently with the New York Times, presciently made the connection in 1993:

The rise of China, if it continues, may be the most important trend in the world for the next century. When historians one