The east is red…and so is the global south
Only surprise here for me is Venezuela and Nicaragua. Like seriously… still?
That is starting to change rapidly for both countries.
For Nicaragua -> https://www.telesurtv.net/nicaragua-y-china-inician-nueva-fase-de-colaboracion-economica-y-comercial/ https://globaltradeculture.com/como-nicaragua-esta-expandiendo-su-comercio-con-china/
For Venezuela -> https://noticiaslatam.lat/20250204/el-comercio-entre-china-y-venezuela-aumento-a-3000-millones-sin-contar-la-balanza-petrolera-1160972214.html
That’s just a function of their proximity to the US. When you’re that close you don’t have much of a choice. I don’t think Japan wanted their main trading partner to be China either, but they are where they are and they have to deal with it.
I think it’s more interesting to notice where there are outliers who are close to the US but still have more trade with China. Cuba is noticeable but not surprising, that’s just a result of the embargo. Panama is the intriguing one.
The US is now trying very hard re-assert dominance at least in their most immediate sphere of influence by forcing Panama out of the BRI. Long term they probably won’t be able to reverse the trend, but in the short term they can bully a few countries into submission.
Other interesting outliers are Paraguay and Jordan, as fairly isolated blue spots in otherwise red regions. Jordan of course is basically a US neocolony, their regime is one of the biggest Arab enablers of the Zionist entity.
It’s Paraguay that surprises me. I know a little about their history but i will admit i’m not very familiar with the current political and economic situation over there, so i would have to learn more about them to understand why they are still so closely tied to the US.
Edit: Also, i think we could see Argentina flip back to the US at some point with the way things are going there. It’s not something that can happen overnight just because the current administration is pro-US, but with the kind of deindustrialization policies that are being implemented there now to turn it into a resource colony, the material basis for meaningful trade with China may just disappear. Where most of the rest of the global south is moving in a developmental direction, Argentina is one of the few going the opposite way at the moment. It’s sad but that’s what seems to be happening.
You know what I just realized? War is used to destroy the productive capacity of competition, right? That’s why we’re afraid the US will bomb China but also the reason we understand that they won’t. Because the US relies on China’s production so they can’t bomb it.
But I just realized something else!
The new rising world powers have no incentive to go to war with the USA or Europe because there’s so little production to compete with that bombing them would do nothing.
Do you see what this means? Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is threatening to make to make the West not even worth bombing!
they cant bomb china because their own factories are there 😂 hence the push for nearshoring or reindustrialize.
Bombing was never part of the plan… the plan has always been, and continues to be:
- Do nothing
- Win
BRI is the opposite of doing nothing. China has been proactively building up south-south economic ties and building up infrastructure and productive forces to enable the global south to break free of neocolonialism. We shouldn’t make it seem like the Chinese are just sitting on their asses doing nothing because that is not at all the case. They just haven’t been going to war, funding terrorists or overthrowing governments like the West does. This can look like “doing nothing” if you are used to the imperialist MO, but actually it’s far more productive than the conflict strategy.
This is very impressive, but surely there must be a country somewhere who’s largest trading partner is someone else, besides the US or China?
This isn’t a map of countries’ largest trading partners, it’s a map showing whether the US or China is the larger trading partner for each country
Oh duh I can’t read. It says “larger”, not “largest”.
This. The map just shows where China overtook the US, not whether China is number one in all of those countries. Depending on the region some of these countries may have a local regional power (e.g. Germany for many EU countries, perhaps Brazil for South America?) as their largest trading partner, but even in those cases the US and China will still likely be very highly placed.
How would you verify this ?
Import statistics from all the countries you’re interested in.
