Namibia in Numbers: The Temu, Shein effect and China’s trade dominance amid geopolitical deglobalisation

CHINA was Namibia’s second-largest source of imports in 2024, behind South Africa. While ties to South Africa remain strong, Chinese imports continue to grow in prominence, with its imports rising to an all-time high of 7.3% of Namibia’s gross domestic product in 2024, up from 3.1% in 2021.

Globally, the picture is even more concentrated around China.
In 2024, China was the number one source of imports for around two-thirds of countries. In many of these relationships, China leads by a wide margin. In more than half of the countries where China ranks first, imports from China are at least double those from the United States, which is frequently the runner-up and was once the dominant import partner for many countries. Many economies, therefore, have a clear primary supplier, rather than a balanced basket of near-equals.

Political context surrounding this dominance has changed over the past few years. The world is still trading, but with more suspicion. Geoeconomic fragmentation is rising, with trade and investment increasingly shaped by security concerns, alliances, and strategic competition rather than pure efficiency. Economic and technological forces often unite countries, but geopolitical tensions and policy differences are pulling trade relationships apart.

The world appears to be becoming less globalised than it once was. Countries are increasingly willing to pay more to reduce dependence on any single supplier, particularly for “strategic” goods, such as critical minerals, semiconductors, energy technology, and defence-related inputs.
Global trade is expected to remain resilient, but it is under pressure from fragmentation risks and policy uncertainty.

The outlook is more cautious as geopolitical tensions raise costs and complicate supply chains. This also means that, even where the value of trade appears to be growing, underlying volumes may not be increasing as quickly, because prices are rising as firms and governments prioritise duplication and diversification. However, deglobalisation is not unfolding in a clean or uniform way.

Some supply chains are being actively re-wired by policy, but many still route back to China because its manufacturing ecosystem is difficult to copy quickly. China’s manufacturing system is built around dense industrial clusters, with one city known for electronics, another for clothing, another for batteries, etc. Because these businesses sit close to one another, they can share suppliers, compete intensely and scale production quickly. The result is that China acts as a one-stop supermarket for global manufacturing, where buyers can source almost anything at competitive speeds and scale.

Even when companies try to shift production elsewhere, China often remains in the background. Many final products still rely on Chinese inputs, components, or raw materials. In practice, it is easier to move final assembly than to relocate the full ecosystem behind it.

Popular platforms Temu and Shein seem unrealistically cheap in price because they have connected Chinese factories directly to consumers through demand aggregation. The platforms draw many buyers and channel that demand to factories with excess capacity. When production lines are idle, these factories accept razor-thin margins rather than absorb the costs of unused capacity.

This helps explain how some products can be sold at low prices, and why the perception of “cheap” Chinese goods persists, even as quality has improved across many categories. It also helps explain why these platforms’ offerings change constantly, as factories remove whatever is in excess to keep capacity under control.

In some sense, these manufacturers actually induce consumer demand outside of China, rather than the consumer inducing these manufacturers to produce. The consumer data collected through this process is also highly valuable for China, their manufacturing firms, and any prospective buyers of this data, and high demand for excess goods could actually signal these manufacturing companies to increase their production as the demand has been proven after the initial test run. The European Union (EU) recorded nearly five billion low-value parcels in 2024, with over 90% coming from China, with the EU now moving toward new fees/duties targeting these flows.

This dominance, combined with the push towards deglobalisation, leaves the global economy in an awkward position. China’s role as the leading import partner for many manufactured goods and strategic inputs gives it significant leverage. At the same time, this concentration creates strong incentives for other capable economies to diversify and develop alternative supply chains. Trade is likely to continue flowing, but through tighter political filters than it did during the era of peak globalisation.

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