Short description
Offers insight necessary for the reader to understand the links between the rise of the Arab world and China and shows the steps we have to take to adjust to this change. The author uses fifteen years of research gathered from his work as an experienced financial analyst in China and his travels in the Middle East.
Long description
The author provides the insight necessary for the reader to understand the links between the rise of the Arab world and China and shows the steps we have to take to adjust to this ongoing change. The author uses fifteen years of research gathered from his work as an experienced financial analyst in China and his travels in the Middle East. This is a breakthrough account of how China is spurring growth in the Arab world and how we must adapt to these changes. There is not other book on the market like this.This is a hugely topical book in light of the current situation in the Middle East and Iraq and will be of great interest. The rise of the Arab world and China are part of the same story, once trading partners via the Silk Road. It isn't a coincidence that Arab traders have returned to China at the same time that China is fast regaining its share of the global economy. This is a breakthrough account of how China is spurring growth in the Arab world.
Review
'Simpfendorfer is not just a good economist but an artful story teller who entertains as he educates. He has written a highly readable treatment of a topic of great strategic significance - the rebalancing of global wealth and power through the emerging relationship between the Islamic world and China. 'The New Silk Road' is a glimpse of the future that is easy to get into and hard to put down.' - Chas W. Freeman, Jr., former US charge at Beijing and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. 'Despite the global economic crisis, the trajectory of the Arab and Chinese economies still match the soaring skylines of Dubai and Shanghai. Furthermore, as Ben Simpfendorfer bracingly illustrates, these are not isolated events but rather the resurrection of a Silk Road symbiosis. For all the region's troubles, this book places the Persian Gulf back where it geographically belongs: at the center of Eurasia and bending towards the overwhelming gravity of China.' - Parag Khanna, author of 'The Second World' and Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation 'The macroeconomics of China's rise and the nitty-gritty of Chinese businesses bargaining on the ground in the Arab world are like Parisian courtesans and Eskimos: world's apart, and nearly impossible to reconcile into a single narrative. But Ben Simpfendorfer's New Silk Road provides a Rosetta Stone to achieve just such a reconciliation. With an economists' toolbox for mapping aggregate growth, and a diarists' talent for capturing the minute, human interactions that join executives and officials from these two ancient worlds, he makes the logic, limits and significance of Sino-Arab engagement understandable.' -- Daniel Rosen, Principle, Rhodium Group, LLC 'As the chief China economist for Royal Bank of Scotland in Hong Kong and a former resident of both Beirut and Damascus, Mr Simpfendorfer is well placed to tackle the subject. But although he is a professional economist, what sets Mr Simpfendorfer's book aside from the usual run of publications about the mainland's rise is not his command of macroeconomic statistics, but his grasp of how the expanding relationship between China and the Arab world works at the personal level.' - Tom Holland, South China Morning Post
Table of contents
- The Arab World Rediscovers China
- Chinese Petrodollars and the Competition for Oil
- The Arab Wealth Funds and the Rise of an 'Islamic Corridor'
- Syria Learns from China while the Chinese 'Go Global'
- The New Public Relations War: 'Al Jazeera in China'
- Arabic and the Language of Globalization
- Young Women and the Future of the Arab World
- Implications for the West: A New Center of Gravity.