Centrally Planned Economy

China's unique authoritarian-capitalist model has evolved to thrive in a global free market and surprised naysayers.

Its centralised system allows Beijing to muster the necessary resources and focus on the outcome that it wants.

This allows China to be very strategic in the way it has been investing, linking up with countries, building long-term economic relationships - which neither the US nor Europe can do.

An example is China's work in Africa: China-Africa trade (see below) - was $10bn in 2000; it grew to $220bn in 2014. The decrease since 2014 was largely due to the impact of weak commodity prices on the value of African exports to China.

In Latin America, a concerted state-sanctioned strategy of trade, loans and investments sees China asserting its influence on the region's economic development and geopolitical balance.