Figures on the Billiard Table: EU-China Dynamics in the Wake of the 2024 European Elections
“Red over green, white over green, new figures emerged like signs; quickly they blew away, nothing remained; music without melody, painting without representation; just squares, rectangles, diamonds, in large numbers; balls sloshing against the black edge.”
While still a powerhouse in its own right, Europe’s relative influence on the world stage has been diminishing over the last few decades. Data, for example, highlight a significant shift in global trade patterns away from the old continent. According to a recent Brookings’ calculation, South-South trade had by 2009, i.e., around the time of the global financial crisis, increased from 10.9 per cent to 25.0 per cent worldwide. South-South trade thus surpassed North-North trade for the first time in world history. Today, 35.0 per cent of global trade is accounted for by South-South merchandise trade, and just 25.0 per cent of global trade is North-North trade. One important factor in this is a surging China-Africa trade. With China’s bilateral trade with Africa rising from 2.7 billion dollar in 1990 to 209 billion dollar in 2022, China has now become Africa’s single largest trading partner.
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(Photo credit: Cal Gao, Unsplash)