China’s second coming

It’s a new version of the Yellow Peril. The Chinese are taking over the world, starting with the nasty bits, like Burma, Sudan and Iran, which we are boycotting for all kinds of high-minded reasons. Two Spanish journalists, Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araújo, have returned from an exhausting trip round the globe to tell us how it’s being done. After carrying out 500 interviews, the authors seem outraged by the corruption and environmental devastation they witness, but also awed by the sheer guts and industry that individual Chinese show in doing business where so many others fail.

The authors believe that something is going on in the global economy that is altogether different, bigger and possibly uglier than anything seen before. The first waves of Chinese emigration took place in the autumn of the Qing dynasty when indentured labourers were shipped out to mine gold in California or Australia; they also built railways in the Wild West and in Malaya tapped rubber trees or mined tin.