China’s export machine is expanding its share of the global market

China is eating up a larger chunk of the world’s shrinking trade pie.

Brushing off rising wages, a shrinking workforce and intensifying competition from lower cost nations from Vietnam to Mexico, China’s global export share climbed to 14.6 percent last year from 12.9 percent a year earlier. That’s the highest proportion of world exports ever in International Monetary Fund data going back to 1980.