Macroscope | The trade war has changed US-China ties forever, so Beijing is building bridges to the EU through the belt and road
- The trade conflict will more likely than not end in a stalemate, sending Beijing scrambling for sophisticated partners
- China’s overtures to Europe make sense in this light, since Donald Trump has not shown the foresight to counter them
Spheres of influence – political, ideological and economic – are nothing new but the sheer size of the United States and Chinese economies (the world's biggest and second biggest) and of their spheres of influence implies a new kind of East-West divide from here on.
How will all this fall out? China needs overseas markets more than the US does. Above all it needs wealthy and sophisticated capital and consumer goods markets if the country's industrial and technological revolution is to continue. There is, for now, only one place to look for those outside the US, and that is in Europe.
The Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as having anticipated at least a partial severing of US-China economic relations by creating infrastructure links across Central Asia from China to Western and Eastern Europe. In this sense, China's new sphere of economic influence is already in the making.