Africans' fatter wallets shift trade focus with China

Even as growth in the volume of Chinese overall exports has eased, more and more Chinese manufacturers retain high ambitions for trade with Africa.

Xie Weiming, vice-president of the Zhejiang International Business Group Co in Hangzhou, says the company's exports had a rough time in developed markets last year.

"Five or eight years ago exports grew at 15 percent to 20 percent a year, but that was certainly not the case last year."

In 2013 the company had revenue of $5.4 billion, with exports accounting for $4.36 billion of that, and Xie says exports may have grown by about 5 percent last year.

"We started to tap African and Southeast Asian markets from 2010 onwards, after the global financial crisis. The growth rate for exports doubled that year, but subsequently we found that we could not maintain the same pace."

Xie says that though developed markets, especially the US, have already returned to normal growth rates, they have not benefited Chinese companies. Many labor-intensive manufacturing industries in Zhejiang have moved to Africa and Southeast Asia because of lower labor and material costs, Xie says.