Quick: Tom Barnett notes a NYT piece from last Sunday discussing China's expanding, no-(political/environmental)-strings-attached dispersal of development aid to countries too unprofitable and/or unstable for the existing aid bureaucracy, then follows through with a concise and thoroughly Barnettian sketch of superpower cooperation in the 21st century:
The new face of Chinese foreign aid is described quite simply as "difficult construction in remote places that benefits the recipient, and China, too."
SysAdmin on the cheap. Development-in-a-cardboard-box.
Sitting on nearly a trillion U.S. hard currency reserves, China is learning to make friends throughout Asia, handing out big loans "that used to be the sole preserve of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United States and Japan."
Interesting division of labor here, yes?
China feels incompetent (for now) to direct investments in its own country, so it recycles a huge chunk of that money into U.S. financial markets, which then choose how to invest in China--for China.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and the Old Core in general beg off the SysAdmin-type work in the Gap, instead outsourcing that function--somewhat unwittingly--to the Chinese through our massive trade imbalances with China.
China outsources the Leviathan role to the U.S. (it prefers to free ride on major security issues) and the U.S. outsources the SysAdmin-style dirty, dangerous and difficult development jobs to China. Our chocolate, their peanut butter.