The New Silk Roads

Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL – that have been flagged as national security threats by US intelligence

Facebook, which has data-sharing partnerships with at least four major Chinese electronics businesses – all of which have close ties to the government in Beijing

A perfect example of this new and often strange world comes with the sale of the largest stake in the firm that quarries the Carrara marble in Italy that was used for the Pantheon in Rome, the Duomo in Siena, Marble Arch in London and the Peace Monument that stands in the grounds of the Capitol in Washington, DC. The principal shareholder is the bin Laden family – which in turn means that the marble that was used in the Freedom Tower in New York City comes from quarries now owned by the family of the man who masterminded the destruction of the Twin Towers that previously stood on the same site

That is the case in the United States, where the rise of China seems not only to pose systemic questions about America’s future but also to cast a shadow that makes yearning for the supposed golden years of the twentieth century understandable