Digital silk road provides path to progress

Human civilization has engaged in global trade for millennia, and China has played a major role for nearly all of that time. Indeed, China is one of the oldest trading nations on earth. Dating from antiquity, the ancient Silk Road connected China and its goods to the markets of the Middle East and Europe until the mid-19th century.

There is no question that today China has built one of the largest economies in the world, with a growth rate of 10 or 11 percent annually over the past five years. So it's natural that, once again, people are asking what that means in terms of China's role in the global economy.

What's behind that question is an assumption that runs from the first days of the Silk Road. For much of the last two millennia - and too often today - global trade has been seen as a zero-sum game. China's growth, according to that view, must come at the expense of other nations. Thus, the constant focus on the balance of trade: if your metric is your share of a static "sum", then you are concerned with your "rise" or "fall".