Last week the Guardian had a piece on the proposed ‘dry canal’ in Colombia, which would compete directly with the Panama Canal nearby to the north. There are significant trade implications for the future, obviously, but the story also has important political and historical sides. Whereas the Panama Canal represents the twentieth century dominance of the U.S. in global trade, the new multi-billion dollar project in Colombia would be funded by China.

This is part of a worldwide pattern. I was surprised to learn while in Costa Rica a couple of years ago that China was building a brand-new, $80 million soccer stadium in the capital city, San Jose — and I’m not sure it’s out of the goodness of China’s heart or because of its enduring affinity for “the beautiful game.â€? There are also massive China-backed infrastructure projects happening across the African continent, intended to create the conditions in which China can do business, especially extracting the natural resources its own booming economy requires. Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo wrote about this trend in her much-discussed book, Dead Aid.

But these developments in Colombia come in the context of a debated free trade deal with the U.S., which may have something to do with Colombia’s current negotiations with China. But Kevin Gallagher, I think, puts the situation in perspective:

[E]ven if Colombia gets the sorry trade deal it wants and doesn’t get a canal, the United States is literally and figuratively bankrupt in its competition with Chinese finance. Literally, because the US has the largest deficit on the planet and owes a big chunk of that to the Chinese. Figuratively, because the economic model that the US has exported to Latin America hasn’t worked. China is funding infrastructure, exploration, science and technology, and all the other things that President Obama says we should be spending on here at home.

All of this reminds me of Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria’s important book, The Post-American World, which, as Zakaria makes clear in the book’s very first sentence, is “not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else.â€? Taking a good and honest look at the world, it’s obvious to me that despite Zakaria’s claim, not everyone else is rising (at least not equally or equitably). But he is right to point to China and India, among others, as countries we can’t afford to ignore or minimize any longer. Of course, whether China’s impact on the world — and especially on the poorest and most vulnerable — will be favorable remains an open question.

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