[AsiaTimes], Never in the history of American foreign policy has so much egg adhered to so little face as in the matter of Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. All of America's allies, including Britain and Australia, have elected to join the Chinese-led institution. That is a grand validation of China's One Belt/One Road vision for infrastructure upgrades across the whole Eurasian landmass. China's President Xi Jinping envisions $2.5 trillion of trade between his country and the "Silk Road" nations over the next decade. Rather than fret about the impact of a slowing (or shrinking) world economy on China's export-driven prosperity, China is seeking to shape the economic environment around it.
It is not only the Obama administration that has been wrong-footed by the world's embrace of China's economic ambitions, but almost the whole of America's foreign-policy elite. With almost no exceptions, American analysts have misunderstood China. One school argues that China inevitably will collapse of its own weight, because authoritarian governments supposedly are incapable of efficient allocation of resources; another warns of a Chinese plan for world domination.
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