The China in Africa Podcast

South Africa’s Active Yet Unequal Trade With China

2025-03-28

From afar, the China-South Africa trade relationship looks amazing. Last year, the two countries sold more than $52 billion worth of goods to one another — mostly raw materials from South Africa and finished goods from China. But when you look at the figures more closely, some real problems become evident. While trade volumes between the two countries have grown exponentially over the past 20 years, so has South Africa's trade deficit with China, which reached almost $10 billion last year. Marvellous Ngundu, a research consultant at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, explored the problem in a r...