These are the top 10 manufacturing countries in the world

Feb 25, 2020

With the collaboration of Statista.

Employees work on the production line of a robot vacuum cleaner factory of Matsutek in Shenzhen, China August manufacturing countries exports production producing manufacture making factory china united states us u.s america north america japan Japanese Chinese germany german south korea south korean india india italy italian france french uk united kingdom britian great britian gb england ireland wales scotland mexico mexican

China manufactures nearly a third of the world's goods. Image: REUTERS/Jason Lee

Felix Richter

Data Journalist, Statista

Our Impact

What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Geographies in Depth?

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how China is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

China

UN data shows China to be the world's manufacturing powerhouse.
Manufacturing is responsible for nearly 30% of the country's economic output.
Shutdowns in China, as a result of the coronavirus, could have knock-on effects around the world.

While the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak will undoubtedly be most severe in China, the negative effects of the pandemic won’t be confined by the Great Wall. After all, China is the world’s manufacturing hub and the ripple effect of shutdowns across the country is already leading to supply constraints in various industries all around the globe.

Have you read?

According to data published by the United Nations Statistics Division, China accounted for 28 percent of global manufacturing output in 2018. That puts the country more than 10 percentage points ahead of the United States, which used to have the world’s largest manufacturing sector until China overtook it in 2010.

With total value added by the Chinese manufacturing sector amounting to almost $4 trillion in 2018, manufacturing accounted for nearly 30 percent of the country’s total economic output. The U.S. economy is much less reliant on manufacturing these days: in 2018, the manufacturing sector accounted for just 11 percent of GDP in the world’s largest economy.

manufacturing countries exports production producing manufacture making factory china united states us u.s america north america japan Japanese Chinese germany german south korea south korean india india italy italian france french uk united kingdom britian great britian gb england ireland wales scotland mexico mexican

China tops the list. Image: Statista

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.