For nearly three decades, Chinese peasants have left their villages for crowded dormitories and sweaty assembly lines, churning out goods for world markets. Now, China is turning the tables.
Here in the Australian Outback, Shane Padley toils in the scorching heat, 3,220km from his home, to build an extension to a liquified natural gas plant that feeds China's ravenous hunger for energy.
At night, the 34-year-old carpenter sleeps in a tin dwelling known as a "donga," the size of a shipping container and divided into four rooms, each barely big enough for a bed. There are few other places for Padley to live in this boomtown.
Stuck to the wall with a jagged piece of duct tape is a snapshot of the blonde girlfriend he left behind and worries he may lose. But, he says, "I can make nearly double what I'd be making back home in the Sydney area."
The reason: China.
For years, China's booming economy touched daily life in the West most visibly through the "made-in-China" label on everything from clothes to computers. But now, economic growth is giving rise to something more that can't be measured just by widgets and gadgets -- a shift in China's balance of power with the rest of the world.
China's reach now extends from the Australian desert to the Amazonian jungle -- and it's those regions supplying goods for China, not just the other way around. China has stepped up its political and diplomatic presence, most notably in Africa, where it is funneling billions of dollars in aid. And it is increasingly shaping the lifestyle of people around the world, as the US did before it, right down to the Mandarin students now learn in schools from Argentina to Virginia.
China, like the US, is also learning that global power cuts both ways. The backlash over tainted toothpaste and toxic pet food has been severe, as has the criticism over China's support for pariah regimes such as that in Sudan.
To understand why China's influence is increasingly pushing past its borders, just do the math.
When 1.3 billion people want something, the world feels it. And when ever more of those people are joining a swelling middle class eager for a richer lifestyle, the world feels it even more.
If China's growth continues, the country will be the world's second-largest consumer market by 2015. The Chinese already eat 32 percent of the world's rice, build with 47 percent of its cement and smoke one out of every three cigarettes.
China's desire for expensive hardwood to turn into top-quality floorboards for its luxury skyscrapers has penetrated deep into the Amazon jungle. For example, in the isolated community of Novo Progresso, or New Progress in Portuguese, one of the biggest sawmills was started by the mayor with financing from Chinese investors.
China accounts for 30 percent of the wood exported from logging operations in remote towns across Brazil's rainforest, where trucks carry the finished product hundreds of kilometers along muddy roads to river ports, said Luiz Carlos Tremonte, who heads an influential wood industry association. Many Chinese purchasers now travel to Brazil to clinch deals, and are almost always accompanied at business meetings by friends or relatives of Chinese descent who live there.
"Ten years ago no one knew about China in Brazil, then the demand just exploded and they're buying a lot," Tremonte said. "This wood is great for floors, and they love it there."
China is also buying coal mining equipment from Poland and drilling for oil and gas in Ethiopia and Nigeria. It has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Zambia's copper industry. It is the world's biggest market for mobile phones, headed for 520 million handsets this year. The list goes on.
Along with looking to other countries for goods for its people, China is also going far and wide in search of markets for its products.
In war-torn Liberia, where electricity is hard to come by, Chinese-made Tiger generators keep the local economy humming. Costlier western brands, favored by aid agencies and diplomats, are beyond the reach of small business owners such as Mohammed Kiawu, who runs a phone stall in the capital, Monrovia.
"US$45 to US$50 can get you at least a second hand Tiger generator," the 30-year-old man said over the steady beat of his generator. "But even US$250 is not enough to buy a used American or European generator. They are not meant for people like myself."
What drives China, some experts say, is economic -- the deep-rooted desire to make up for decades of economic stagnation after the communist takeover in 1949.
According to figures from China's National Bureau of Statistics, per capita income grew six-fold between 1978, when the first economic reforms were introduced, and 2005, the latest year for which full statistics are available. The per capita income figures for 2005 were 3,255 yuan (US$400) for those in the countryside and 10,493 yuan (US$1,275) for urban Chinese.
"The Chinese don't want war -- the Chinese just want to trade their way to power," said David Zweig, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "In the past, if a state wanted to expand, it had to take territory. You don't need to grab colonies any more. You just need to have competitive goods to trade."
If China stays on the same economic track, it would become the world's largest economy in 2027, surpassing the US, according to Goldman, Sachs & Co, a Wall Street investment bank. China still has a huge pool of workers to tap and an emerging middle class, and many development economists believe China still has 20 years of fairly high growth ahead.
But the transition to a larger presence on the global stage comes with growing pains, for China and the rest of the world.
As China plays an ever bigger role in the developing world, some Western countries fear it could undermine efforts to promote democracy. In its attempt to secure markets and win allies, China is stepping up development aid to Africa and Asia. Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) pledged last year to double Chinese aid to Africa between 2006 and 2009, promising US$3 billion in loans, US$2 billion in export credits and a US$5 billion fund to encourage Chinese investment in Africa. China has also promised Cambodia a US$600 million aid package and agreed to lend US$500 million to the Philippines for a rail project.
But China also extends aid to pariah states such as Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Sudan that have lost the support of the West.
"In some ways, it will be integrating us into a new international order in which democracy as we've known it or the right to open organized political activity is no longer considered the norm," said Jim Mann, author of The China Fantasy, a book on Chinese politics.
China is also facing some of the unease that powers before it have encountered. In Africa and Asia, some complain that massive China-funded infrastructure projects involve mostly Chinese workers and companies. Moeletsi Mbeki, a political commentator and brother of South African President Thabo Mbeki, likens the trade of African resources for Chinese manufactured goods to former colonial arrangements.
"This equation is not sustainable," Mbeki said at a recent meeting of the African Development Bank in Shanghai. "Africa needs to preserve its natural resources to use in the future for its own industrialization."
The backlash is also coming on the consumer front, with Chinese goods earning a dubious reputation for quality. In the US, there is a furor over the standard of goods coming out of China. In Bolivia, vendors peel off or paint over any indication that their wares were "Hecho en China," Spanish for "Made in China."
Even those who benefit from China's growth express some wariness. Aerospace giant Boeing expects China to be the largest market for commercial air travel outside the US in the next 20 years, buying more than US$100 billion worth of commercial aircraft, US trade envoy Karan Bhatia said in a recent speech.
"Right now, we're hiring every week," noted Connie Kelliher, a union leader. "Things couldn't be better."
Yet Boeing workers remain wary of China's ambitions to build its own planes. China plans to conduct test flights next year for a locally made, mid-sized jet seating 78 to 85 passengers. It also has announced plans to roll out a 150-seat plane by 2020.
"It's kind of a double-edged sword," Kelliher said. "You want the business and we want to get the airplane sales to them, but there's the real concern of giving away so much technology that they start building their own."
That's what happened to Western and Japanese automakers, who made inroads in the Chinese market only to see their designs copied and technologies stolen by Chinese competitors. Already, China's vehicle manufacturers are venturing overseas, exporting 325,000 units last year -- mostly low-priced trucks and buses to Asia, Africa and Latin America.
"We're taking a bigger piece of the pie," said Yamilet Guevara, a sales manager for Cinascar Automotriz, which has opened 20 showrooms in Venezuela in the past 18 months, offering cars from six Chinese makers. "They ask by name now. It's no longer just the Chinese car. It's the Tiggo, the QQ."
China's biggest car company, Chery Automobile Co, just announced a deal with the Chrysler Group to jointly produce and export cars to Western Europe and the US within two-and-a-half years.
Given the speed of China's ascent, it's perhaps not surprising that China itself is trying to calm some of the fears. Its slogan for next year's Beijing Olympics: "Peacefully Rising China."
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