James Kynge, author of China Shakes the World, writes an illuminating analysis of just how China is blurring the Western definition of “developed” and “developing” countries (FT). In addition to a lot of “firsts”, including displacing Japan as the second largest economy in the world, and China’s own A-share market coming in just behind New York’s in capitalization, as well as overcoming Germany as the world’s largest exporter. Of course, China also now has the dubious distinction of supplanting America as the world’s largest emitter of carbon emissions. All this, while having a per capita income of US$3,200, a bit more than Iraq’s.

Where China is really making waves, though, is in its commitment to develop Africa – albeit for its mineral resources; however, China has done more to jump-start African economies than all the Western aid that poured into Africa from 1983 to 2000. Brazil, Russia and India are in on the act, as well, underscoring the point that the world economy is now increasingly powered by countries Anglo-American and Western European countries condemned to what I call “donor-economics”, a sort of global voodoo economics. Interestingly, if the African nations continue to realize their own value to the global trading system and continue to assert their rights in the negotiation and enforcement of contracts with, especially, the Chinese, African nations within the next decade could be well on their way to per capita incomes higher than they could ever have imagined before. So while the West licks wounds self-inflicted through unbridled greed – both in the markets and the regulators who were supposed to be moderating them – the “developing” is becoming the Developer.