Sovereign and dependent territory rows of the World Bank “High-technology exports (current US$)” indicator (top 30 by most recent year). High-technology products are R&D-intensive goods — aerospace, computers, electronics, pharmaceuticals, scientific instruments and electrical machinery — identified by mapping UN Comtrade SITC product codes onto the OECD R&D-intensity classification. Values in nominal billion US dollars (two decimals). Aggregates excluded.
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How to use this chart
Play/Pause starts and stops the year-by-year animation, the year slider jumps to any year, and the speed selector (0.5×, 1×, 2×) changes playback speed. Each year shows the top 12 entries out of the 30 held in the dataset.
About this ranking
About this metric. “High-Technology Exports by Country (Time Series)” reformats data published by the World Bank (indicator code TX.VAL.TECH.CD). High-technology here means product groups whose industries spend heavily on R&D relative to sales — aerospace, computers and office machinery, electronics and telecommunications equipment, pharmaceuticals, scientific instruments and electrical machinery. UN Comtrade product codes are mapped onto the OECD’s technology-intensity classification, and values are expressed in nominal billion US dollars.
What to watch. Follow Japan’s bar. It starts 4th in 2007 at $128.6 billion and finishes 11th in 2024 at $102.5 billion — one of the very few countries in this top-30 whose absolute figure is smaller at the end of the race than at the start.
Caveats. These are nominal US dollars, so inflation and exchange-rate swings are baked in. Hong Kong jumps from $0.47 billion in 2016 to $293.6 billion in 2017; that is a break in the series — the count appears to switch from Hong Kong-made goods only to total exports including re-exports — rather than a real-world shift. Entrepôt economies such as Hong Kong, Singapore and the Netherlands carry large volumes of goods they did not manufacture. Note also that the World Bank does not cover Taiwan, so a major semiconductor exporter is absent from this ranking.
Trends in the data
China grew 2.5×, from 343.6 billion dollars in 2007 to 856.8 billion in 2024, and has not surrendered first place once in the 18 years covered. Set against the World Bank’s world total, China’s 825.1 billion dollars in 2023 is 23.1% of the global 3,575.4 billion. The contrast is the United States, second in 2007: it went from 240.7 billion to 232.9 billion in 2024, essentially flat, and has fallen to 4th. Its path was not a straight line, though — it dropped to 151.0 billion in the financial crisis of 2009, bottomed at 141.6 billion in 2020, and has recovered more than 60% of that by 2024. Germany rose from 169.6 to 246.6 billion and South Korea from 107.2 to 216.2 billion, both building steadily.
The most striking thing when stepping through the years is how fast the Southeast Asian bars rise. Vietnam swelled 45×, from 3.0 billion dollars in 2008 to 135.9 billion in 2022, and Malaysia grew 2.4×, from 56.0 billion in 2009 to 134.8 billion in 2024. India expanded from 11.2 billion (2009) to 54.1 billion (2024).
The standout in Europe is Ireland. It was at 33.5 billion dollars in 2007 and had still not reached 50 billion by 2021, then jumped to 92.2 billion in 2022 and 117.6 billion in 2024, breaking into 8th place.
Japan’s growth stopped after 133.4 billion dollars in 2011. It sank to 98.3 billion in 2015 and has then held around 100 billion for a decade. The point is not that Japan shrank but that its rank fell by exactly as much as everyone else grew — which is what this chart shows about Japan.
Trivia quiz
Who decides what counts as a "high-technology" product, and how?
The benchmark is the OECD's 1997 technology-intensity classification. It names specific product codes in the UN's SITC Rev.3 trade nomenclature whose industries spend the most on R&D relative to sales — aerospace, computers and office machinery, electronics and telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, scientific instruments and electrical machinery. (Source)
What is a "re-export", the trade that dominates Hong Kong's export figures?
Goods that the free port of Hong Kong imports and then ships onward to a third market without substantial processing. Official Hong Kong statistics put 2024 domestic exports at HK$57.8 billion against HK$4,484.5 billion of re-exports — roughly 99% of all exports. (Source)
Why does Ireland, a country of about five million people, rank so high in high-technology exports?
Multinational drug makers concentrate their European manufacturing there, so pharmaceuticals carry the export account. Ireland's Central Statistics Office reports €99.9 billion of medical and pharmaceutical exports in 2024, up 29% year on year and about 45% of all goods exports. (Source)
Source
World Bank — High-technology exports (current US$) (TX.VAL.TECH.CD)