as time goes by, the magnetic power of the Chinese economy is moving ever closer to Europe. Just two years ago, the Chinese became the Middle East’s largest trading partner, leaving the European Union in second place and the United States in third. By then, China was already Africa’s largest trading partner, having displaced the U.S. some years earlier.
This may not be making headlines here, but it’s no small thing. The economic rise of China, especially in areas where the U.S. had committed so much in blood, sweat, and drones, should take anyone’s breath away. Fortunately, TomDispatch’s peripatetic Eurasian correspondent Pepe Escobar (the man who invented the term “Pipelineistan” for the web of energy conduits that crisscross that vast continental area) arrives in the nick of time to offer us a view from Beijing of an economy still staggeringly on the rise and the plans of the Chinese leadership, from Asia to Europe, for knitting together what, if it happened, might indeed someday be seen as a new world economic order. Tom