I found this graphic in a Harvard Business Review article titled “what the west doesn’t get about China. This graphic represents millions of 20 foot shipping units… ie containers. Most big containers are 40 footers… and thus would be 2 units… but there are a lot of 20 footers as well… thus the unit. ANYWAY… notice that the majority of shipping is intra asia… 44 million shipping units went from point A to point B in Asia.
Only 11.5 went from Asia to North America… and a little less than half of even that, only 6.5, went the other way from North America to Asia. So you can see that the largest amount of production activity in the world is in Asia proper… and the vast majority of what is being produced is staying there. Kind of interesting. The image seems to be missing the North America to Europe and visa versa numbers…. but it was in an article discussing asia’s rise so I suppose it isn’t needed. I kinda would like to see the US and european numbers though… just to get a complete picture.
unlicensed architect, ex-skateboarder, planning commissioner, shoe designer, all around dork
themovement.com 