*/. It also suited the thinking in Washington, where in the wake of Bill Clinton’s watershed trip to China in 1998 an optimistic new consensus was summed up in Thomas Friedman’s 1999 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which popularised the “Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention” whereby “no two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since it got its McDonald's”. A similar situation can be identified in China where HSR is seen as one of the elements in the long-term national economic integration and a catalyst for economic growth. The pulling apart of the world's two biggest economies, often dubbed a "decoupling", could prove at least as decisive for the following decades of world affairs as the integration was for the past four. Trans-Eurasian networks will be more stable. Some projects envisaged for the "one belt, one road" program will be financially attractive or made so. Still, if these initiatives work at all, they will have enormous geopolitical impact. This is an area with a population of 4.4 billion and a current economic output of $21 trillion. Â. With Beijing "relying less on exports to the US market, caring less about its currency’s peg to the dollar”, he theorised, "the end of Chimerica would have arrived, and with it the balance of global power would be bound to shift… China would be free to explore other spheres of global influence.”, [see also: Why a Joe Biden win is unlikely to improve relations between the US and China]. One study estimates, for example, that a relatively modest five percent growth rate in such assets from their current base could create 137 million tons of demand for Chinese steel. While it remains relatively low as a percentage of China's GDP, continuing rapid urbanization and the concomitant growth of China's middle class promise to correct this. Chinese firms got the message: there has been a precipitous fall in Chinese investment in the US, and while US investment in China remains flat overall, it has fallen in crucial areas such as information and communications technology, machinery and financial and business services. Reflecting on Chimerica in 2009, Ferguson wondered whether it would speed up China's rise and delink it from American consumption. As one example of what China has in mind, consider the economic corridor that is to link Kashgar, in Xinjiang, with the port of Gwadar, in Pakistani Balochistan, 1,800 kms. It tells a complicated story, of US-China entanglement in some fields but not in others. It is promoting the Chinese yuan as a medium of trade settlement and public borrowing throughout Eurasia. From left to right: Mr Lye Liang Fook, Mr Joergen Oerstroem Moeller, Dr Francis Hutchinson, Dr Hoe Ee Khor, and Dr Chaipat Poonpatpibul. This is an area with a population of 4.4 billion and a current economic output of $21 trillion. They now contribute almost half of Chinese GDP, up from less than one-third ten years ago. The initiative is also a way of developing Xinjiang and other parts of western China by making them key connectors to Central Asia, Russia, Europe, and the Middle East. The purpose of the "one belt, one road" project is to promote its economic integration with what has been called the "world island" – the conjoined continents of Asia and Europe. Economic integration, or regional integration, is an agreement among nations to reduce or eliminate trade barriers and agree on fiscal policies. Various elements of CITIC have just announced commitments to fund 300 projects from Singapore to Turkmenistan totaling $113 billion. By some estimates, a one millisecond advantage could be worth up to $100 million a year to a single hedge fund company. The Rise and Future of China as an Economic Power As the People's Republic of China turns 70, its leader focuses on hyper-growth. China will become the center of economic gravity of a vast, loosely integrated region that already has 55 percent of world GNP, 70 percent of global population, and 75 percent of known energy reserves. China has set a goal of $2.5 trillion in trade with Silk Road countries by 2025. This suited the thinking in Beijing, where the “new security concept” that took hold in strategic circles in the years following the end of the Cold War preached the benefits of mutual security, cooperation, trust and common interests. $40 billion has gone into the Central Asia-focused Silk Road Fund. Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret. Our own decade’s Big Idea about US-China relations is yet to emerge but if I had to predict one I would invoke either “decoupling” pure and simple, or something related like “spheres of interest”. The availability of credit does not guarantee the availability of financially attractive projects, however desirable they may be in terms of their overall impact on China's economy and its relations with the other societies in Europe and Asia. If Biden wins, the Democrats too are more wary of China’s rise. Meanwhile, the past year has also seen the country’s diplomats (some of whom have taken a newly belligerent tone dubbed as “wolf warrior diplomacy” after a trashy action film) and its military (which has taken harassment of Taiwan and neighbours around the South China Sea to new heights) adopt a newly aggressive stance towards the US and its allies. In the US, legislation responded by stripping privileges from Hong Kong and gave the administration the power to impose sanctions on Chinese officials. But China's main impact on world affairs has been and will continue to be politico-economic. The creation of the SEZ in 1980, when today's futuristic metropolis of 13 million inhabitants was a fishing village, was an early landmark in the opening up of the Chinese economy under Deng Xiaoping, and with it came probably the biggest economic story of our time: the integration of the Chinese and US economies. Investors are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to gain a few milliseconds in highly profitable "high frequency trading" – the automated buying and selling of financial instruments by computers. They are additive and do not supplant them. [CDATA[/* >