As if to illustrate Pete’s post about the rise of China and India, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang has just finished a visit
to Spain during which agreements worth 5.7 billion euros were signed. The Chinese delegation is said to have committed itself to buying six billion euros of Spanish debt, which helped calm markets
and provided some relief for Spain’s recession-hit economy.
Around the time that the Soviet Union collapsed, the Chinese used to say only they could save communism. Twenty years on, it seems only they can save capitalism. The Spanish are certainly in no doubt about the importance of their newfound Chinese friends. The left-leaning Spanish newspaper El País wrote that that Li was received in Madrid as “a new Mr. Marshall,” a reference to US State Secretary George Marshall, whose plan to reconstruct post-war Europe, launched in 1947, triggered the economic rebuilding of Western Europe.
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