WUHAN, CHINA - FEBRUARY 10: Passengers get off trains at the Wuchang Railway Station on February 10, 2010 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. According to the National Development and Reform Commission, China's rail passenger traffic is expected to reach 2.5 billion during the 40-day 'Chunyun' or Spring Festival travel rush, which started from January 30 this year.*
Despite the drop, which represents the greatest year-on-year decline for Germany since 1950, the news of China's takeover was not greeted with great alarm by German economists.
"This is something that was expected. Everyone agrees that China's currency is undervalued, but still it was only a matter of time," Gernot Nerb, head of the industry department with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Munich, told this website.
The official figures also showed a strong export recovery in the fourth quarter of the year, helping to pull Germany out of its recession and providing a silver lining to the more gloomy annual data.
With more than 60 percent of Germany's exports going to other EU countries, concerns have been raised that the bloc's forecast low rates of growth in the coming years could prose a problem for Germany's export model.
"There is some concern but we are mainly exporting investment goods, and you can not postpone investment for ever," said Mr Nerb, conceding that investment levels will probably not pick up before 2011-12 however.
A breakdown of the German figures shows exports to the EU were down 19.1 percent year-on-year, with sales to faster-growing regions of Asia and South America faring little better and falling 17.1 percent.
German imports also declined rapidly in 2009 as result of the financial crisis, dropping fell by 17.2 percent.
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