Here we can see that both the US and the EU were net importers of working time and rely more on work performed outside of their boundaries. 50% and 54% respectively of their consumption was satisfied with embodied work in imports. More specifically, 10,5% and 6,8% of the embodied work in their consumption was Chinese. In contrast, China showed larger self-sufficiency. 91% of its consumption was local and the EU’s and the US’ imports contributed marginally (0,4%). It even had an almost balanced trade with the Rest of the world. We can relate these results to those in Alsamawi et al. (2014), where they classify countries as masters and servants. Masters import cheaper labor from servants. Both the US and the EU are masters, whereas China is an intermediary country, neither master nor servant. Similarly, the world-system theory of Wallerstein (2011) classifies the US and the EU as core regions and China as semiperipheral.
