Tom Engelhardt 82

February 22, 2015 Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Inside China's "New Normal" Sometimes this planet changes right under your nose and you still don’t notice. This sentence, buried in a New York Times piece on the Greek debt crisis, caught my attention the other day: “Greece, meanwhile, has suggested that it could turn to Russia or China for help if its talks on debt relief and a rollback of austerity measures break down.” Russia is, of course, an unlikely bulwark, being on distinctly shaky economic grounds itself right now, but I’m not surprised by the thought -- at least from Syriza, the lefty party now in power in Greece. But China? Not since tiny Albania joined the Chinese camp in the Cold War have we seen a sentence that in any way resembled that one. And yet it certainly catches something of the changing face of our planet. After all, 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 Year of the Sheep, Century of the Dragon?  New Silk Roads and the Chinese Vision of a Brave New (Trade) World  By Pepe Escobar BEIJING -- Seen from the Chinese capital as the Year of the Sheep starts, the malaise affecting the West seems like a mirage in a galaxy far, far away. On the other hand, the China that surrounds you looks all too solid and nothing like the embattled nation you hear about in the Western media, with its falling industrial figures, its real estate bubble, and its looming environmental disasters. Prophecies of doom notwithstanding, as the dogs of austerity and war bark madly in the distance, the Chinese caravan passes by in what President Xi Jinping calls “new normal” mode. “Slower” economic activity still means a staggeringly impressive annual growth rate of 7% in what is now the globe’s leading economy. Internally, an immensely complex economic restructuring is underway as consumption overtakes investment as the main driver of economic development. At 46.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP), the service economy has pulled ahead of manufacturing, which stands at 44%. Geopolitically, Russia, India, and China have just sent a powerful message westward: they are busy fine-tuning a complex trilateral strategy for setting up a network of economic corridors the Chinesecall “new silk roads” across Eurasia. Beijing is also organizing amaritime version of the same, modeled on the feats of Admiral Zheng He who, in the Ming dynasty, sailed the “western seas” seven times, commanding fleets of more than 200 vessels. Meanwhile, Moscow and Beijing are at work planning a new high-speed rail remix of the fabled Trans-Siberian Railroad. And Beijing is committed to translating its growing strategic partnership with Russia into crucial financial and economic help, if a sanctions-besieged Moscow, facing a disastrous oil price war, asks for it. Click here to read more of this dispatch.