Why China is the REAL master of the universe

The hunger for raw materials is making China lose its shyness and venture out into the world. Like Germany and Russia, China has traditionally been a land empire, focusing its expansionist energies on countries it had borders with, and it eschewed the world-conquering exploits of Europe's sea-faring maritime nations.
Europeans have, for half a millennium, been unchallenged as the global colonisers, but last month the respected Economist magazine dubbed the Chinese "The New Colonists".
While the Congo in central Africa was once over-run by Belgians, it is now the Chinese that can be found wondering around its mining belts. In Lubumbashi, the capital of the Congo's copper-rich region Katanga, the Economist reported "a sudden Chinese invasion". Troubled Angola recently shunned Western financial aid because of the amount of Chinese money pouring into it, in return for commodities.
From Kazakhstan to Indonesia to Latin America, Chinese firms are gobbling up oil, gas, coal and metals. More...