China frightens the west. Rarely, however, do westerners look at how the world looks to China. Yes, it has made enormous economic strides. But it still sees a world economy dominated by developed economies.
Among the few westerners able to look at the world from the Chinese point of view is Peter Nolan, professor of Chinese Development at Cambridge university. In a thought-provoking book published last year, he addressed one of the big fears about China – that it is buying the world.* His answer is no: we are inside China but China is not inside us.
To understand what Prof Nolan means by this, one must understand his view of what has happened during three decades of technology-driven global economic integration. The world economy has been transformed, he argues, by the emergence, through mergers, acquisition and foreign direct investment, of a limited number of dominant businesses, almost entirely rooted in advanced countries.