“CHINA is now No 1 in trade”, proclaimed the front-page headline of China Daily USA, the American edition of an official Chinese newspaper, which is showcased in vending machines across America’s capital. The paper, published around the world, is one of the $2.21 trillion-worth of Chinese exports that helped make the headline true—or mostly true.

China’s international trade in goods did indeed lead the world in 2013. Its combined imports and exports amounted to almost $4.2 trillion, exceeding America’s for the first time (the exact size of its lead will not be known until America reports its full-year figures next month).

But goods are not the only things that countries trade. Alongside China Daily’s triumphant front-page story was an article about “PANDA!”, a Las Vegas show performed by the China National Acrobatic Troupe, which chronicles the quest of a heroic panda to liberate a peacock princess from a demon vulture. Such cultural exports are part of the international trade in services, which is of growing significance to global commerce. If trade in services is added to trade in physical goods, China remains number two (see chart).

China’s exports and imports are voluminous partly because its economy is so big. Relative to the size of its GDP, China’s trade is below the world average. Its exports and imports were equivalent to almost 53% of GDP in 2012, whereas the ratio of global trade to world GDP was over 63%.

Relative to the size of its population, China’s trade is also modest. It amounted to just $3,200 per inhabitant in 2012, ranking only 99th in the world. But China has over 1.34 billion people. Any economic magnitude, when divided by a number that size, looks rather less impressive. Populous, spacious economies are often quite closed: America’s ratio of trade to GDP is, for example, only a little above 30%. Brazil’s is about 26%. Indeed, Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute reckons that China’s trade is almost 70% greater than one would expect given the modesty of its income and the vastness of its territory and population.

By the same token, measures of trade per person flatter small countries, like Luxembourg or Singapore. Some of the countries that rank highest by this measure are tiny emirates blessed with oil or gas. Their exports are lucrative, but not terribly sophisticated.

Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University and his colleagues have devised an alternative measure of the sophistication of a country’s exports. To score highly, a country’s exports have to be both varied and esoteric (meaning sold by only a few countries). Using Mr Hausmann’s method, Saurabh Mishra and Nikola Spatafora of the World Bank have ranked countries according to the sophistication of their exports in 2012. Out of 181 countries, China ranks 39th. But that is a higher ranking than one would expect given its modest level of development. Controlling for its income per person, China ranks 10th.

Some sceptics of China’s trade point out that many of its seemingly sophisticated exports include valuable imported components. According to the World Trade Organisation and the OECD, China itself adds only 67% of the value of its exports; America adds 89%. Indeed, if you count only the value that a country adds to its exports, then America’s export figures are about the same as China’s.

But such a calculation would miss the point. Measures of international trade are not trying to capture the value a country adds to its economy through its international dealings. They are instead trying to capture a country’s integration with the rest of the world. The benefits of this integration mostly lie not with exports, but with imports. Countries export what they must to import what they want.

Which economy gets the most out of its imports? The biggest importer is America; the biggest per person, Hong Kong. But the country that gets the most bang for its import buck is possibly Norway. According to the IMF’s calculations, its currency, the krone, is now 83% overvalued—more than any other currency. As a consequence Norway’s money has far more purchasing power when spent on internationally traded goods, selling at world prices, than it does when spent on its own goods at home. Contrary to what China Daily declared this week, it is arguable that Norway is “now No 1 in trade”.