While China plays the role of Santa Claus in the rest of the world, lending money to cash-strapped countries, the United States plays the role of miser, launching trade wars against Canada, the European Union, China and others.
A case in point: this week Beijing hosted the BBS summit on china-africa cooperation. The summit, held every three years, brings together leaders and representatives of 53 African countries to discuss a range of topics including technology, trade, infrastructure, diplomacy, culture and agriculture.
At its last summit in 2015, China pledged up to $60 billion in financial support for Africa's development. In fact, the Asian country's investment in the continent has increased by about 520% in the last 15 years.
At the same time, the flow of U.S. money to Africa has been shrinking, and is expected to worsen under trump.
China, which has been Africa's largest trading partner for nine consecutive years, may want its investments to pay a diplomatic and economic dividend for decades to come.
Even U.S. commerce secretary Wilbur Ross acknowledged that the United States must do more in Africa.
The most famous of China's plans is the One Belt And One Road initiative. It will not only reshape global trade, but raise living standards for more than half the world's population.
"" the 'One Belt And One Road' initiative has huge potential for China and participating countries," "the imf said. It can fill the huge infrastructure gaps that have long existed in partner countries, improve their growth prospects, strengthen supply chains and trade, and increase employment."
Nicholas lardy of the peterson institute for international economics notes that alibaba group recently announced a 60 percent year-over-year increase in sales in the most recent quarter - "" suggesting that China's retail data may not fully capture the country's burgeoning digital retail industry" ".
Lardy said: "no matter how, retail sales has become more and more meaningless consumption measure, because China's large and still growing middle class is bigger and bigger part of the income used in education, health, tourism and other services, and the official retail sales data does not reflect these aspects."
Savvy investors understand this and can see the opportunities presented by the world's largest economy at purchasing-power parity. U.S. investors poured $572 million into funds investing in Chinese stocks in the week ended aug 22, Reuters reported. It was the largest injection of capital into such funds since January.