AP summarizes the global impact of China’s rise:
For China, that’s what made this decade different from the others. It was a time when the massive nation began to reshape the world in both basic and big ways. After spending much of the ’80s and ’90s with their heads down, retooling their shattered economy, the Chinese started peering beyond the horizon and striding out far beyond their borders.
China became one of the biggest investors in Africa. The Chinese craving for tofu caused Brazilian farmers to chop down more acres of trees in the Amazon for soybean fields. Their soaring demand for iron ore caused a housing bubble in the rugged Australian Outback, where men flocked to work in mines. Their factories, powered by cheap labor, sucked away millions of jobs, hollowing out industrial zones in the U.S. and Europe.
Thus China began engaging and reshaping the globe like never before, inspiring awe and respect as well as stoking fear and suspicion.
