China's plastic trade
As the hub of manufacturing of the world, China has more than doubled its exports of plastic products in the last decade, with an export volume of over 14 million metric tons in 2019. East Asia and Pacific has imported a significant amount of the plastic and rubber products from China in terms of value. North America, as well as Europe and Central Asia followed as the next largest plastic importers from China.On the other side, imports of plastic and rubber products to China based on value had a sharp surge from 2009 to 2010, and have consistently remained within the same value range, between 75 billion U.S. dollars and 94 billion U.S. dollars, since then. Similar to exports, the main regions exporting plastic goods to China were East Asia and Pacific, followed by MENA, Europe, and Central Asia, respectively.