No matter what corner of the world into which you peek, you will find the Chinese building, extracting, processing and smelting! You can look to Angola and find a cross-country rail line being built in exchange for oil or to Bolivia for gas deals or to Australia for coal purchases or to energy deals in Kazakhstan. The Chinese have embarked upon a global effort to corner the markets in fuels, metals, raw materials and grains. Giving new definition to the term 'resource diplomacy', China's desperate desire to have access to raw materials in order to continue its amazing growth affects every nation on the globe.

While the United States' foreign policy has become frozen and paralyzed by our 'war on terror' epitomized by our disaster in Iraq, the Chinese have increasingly spread across the global terrain in a 'no questions asked' foreign policy and reached major deal after major deal concerning vital raw goods. Our nation could soon wake up from the nightmare of President Bush's tragically myopic vision of the world to find that we have been cut off from not only needed goods but needed friends.

In a 'must read' special report in The Economist called "The New Colonialists", the magazine devotes fourteen pages to this critical issue. As the report states, "China with about a fifth of the world's population, now consumes half of its cement, a third of its steel and over a quarter of its aluminum." The impact - not only on China's horrendous environment but also the world's - is major. The cornering of the world markets could lead to major international tension in the near future. The carefully carried out 'resource diplomacy' could leave both the European Union and the United States more isolated in the Southern Hemisphere than ever.

Here is an important excerpt from the remarkable special report in The Economist. Take time to read the entire fourteen pages. You will not regret it.

"China's hunger for natural resources has set off a global commodity boom. Developed countries worry about being left high and dry, but the biggest effects will be felt in China itself, says Edward McBride

Beside the railroad track, between two hillocks of rust-red soil in the midst of Congo's mining belt, three Chinese laborers appear as if from nowhere. There are lots of Chinese around these days, explains one of their compatriots, Harvey Lee, who is driving through the scrub to the nearby copper plant he runs for a Canadian metals firm. On his way, he points out several rudimentary smelters. “That one”, he says, waving at a clump of corrugated-iron sheds and belching chimneys, “is owned by a man from Shanghai.” Moments later, when another ramshackle compound comes into view, he adds, “and that one belongs to two ladies from Hong Kong.” In all, he reckons, Chinese entrepreneurs have set up half of Lubumbashi's 50-odd processing plants.

All around Lubumbashi, the capital of Congo's copper-rich province of Katanga, there are signs of a sudden Chinese invasion. Chinese middlemen have begun buying ore from the area's many wildcat miners and selling it on to processing plants like Mr Lee's. Locals point out several villas in the city's leafy colonial cantonment that are occupied by mysterious Chinese businessmen. Katanga Fried Chicken, hitherto Lubumbashi's most popular restaurant, now has three busy Chinese competitors.

If all goes according to plan, these fledgling businesses will soon be overshadowed by Chinese investment on a much grander scale. In late 2007 the Congolese government announced that Chinese state-owned firms would build or refurbish various railways, roads and mines around the country at a cost of $12 billion, in exchange for the right to mine copper ore of an equivalent value. That sum is more than three times Congo's annual national budget and roughly ten times the aid that the “consultative group” of Western donors has promised the country each year until 2010. The Chinese authorities, it seems, are so anxious to obtain enough minerals to sustain their country's remarkable economic growth that they are willing to invest billions in a dirt-poor and war-torn place like Congo—billions more, in fact, than Western governments and investors combined are putting in.

And Congo is not the only beneficiary of China's hunger for natural resources. From Canada to Indonesia to Kazakhstan, Chinese firms are gobbling up oil, gas, coal and metals, or paying for the right to explore for them, or buying up firms that produce them. Ships are queuing off Australia's biggest coal port, Newcastle, to load cargoes destined for China; at one point last June the line was 79 ships long. African and Latin American economies are growing at their fastest pace in decades, thanks in large part to heavy Chinese demand for their resources."