The line graph illustrates the proportion of imports from Australia in four distinct countries between 1990 and 2012. Overall, while the surveyed period witnessed a downward trend regarding the rate of Australian exports to Japan and the US, the opposite was true for China and India.
In 1990, about one-fourth of goods from Australia were exported to Japan, over five times as much as India (over 2%) which led Japan to rank first among the three countries. Five years later, there was a drastic drop of 5% in the percentage of Australian products imported into Japan along with the US (nearly 12% in 1990 compared to less than 8% in 1995). Despite the continuous fall in the rate of imports from Australia in the following years, Japan still led the chart in 2000, approximately 18% compared to over 5% of China that year.
Since 2000, there has been a dramatic rise in the percentage of Australian goods imported into China before overtaking the first place of Japan in 2009, one-fifth and around 17% respectively. Furthermore, the figure for India in 2006 accounted for over 7%, reaching the same rate as America before decreasing to nearly 6% in 2012.