As we move into the second decade of the new century, economic prospects around the Western world are poor. And this affects former Western colonies like Jamaica. Within the last few days we have heard about more big redundancies in the bauxite industry, which reflects the worldwide recession and the decrease in demand for commodities like steel and bauxite.

In the short term, the prospects are grim. It hardly seems fair that ordinary Jamaicans should pay for the failings of their own politicians and an international financial crisis that is not the fault of Caribbean institutions.

But in the long term there is light over the horizon. And it is coming out of the East. It seems that in the 21st century China is going to play the role that was once played by the West in the economies of countries in Africa, the Caribbean and other former colonies.

At the end of last year China hosted yet another in a series of lavish China-African summits, this time in Egypt. The first one was in 2006. Since then Chinese investment has poured into Africa. In 2006 alone Africa signed trade deals with African countries worth over $60 billion, and Angola temporarily overtook Saudi Arabia as China’s main supplier of oil. In 2007 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the biggest bank in the world, paid $5.6 billion for a fifth of South Africa’s Standard Bank. Trade between Africa and China continues to rise spectacularly. Last year it jumped 45 per cent to $107 billion. Africa now accounts for nearly 39 per cent of China’s oil imports. And, at the most recent summit, Beijing pledged $10 billion in new low-cost loans to Africa. It also promised to eliminate tariffs on 60 per cent of exports and to forgive the debt of several countries. In the Caribbean, in the run-up to the Cricket World Cup, China built many more cricket stadiums in the region than Britain — the mother country to the Caribbean and the home of cricket.

The West complains about Chinese investment, but it has important benefits. For starters, the Chinese emphasise infrastructure. So, even if there is corruption in relation to some of the deals, the countries still benefit from the building of roads, ports, hospitals and cricket stadiums.

Furthermore, China also emphasises trade. And this is more likely to encourage business development than government-to-government aid that can be all too easily siphoned off.

Chinese investment is not unproblematic. They tend to insist on using Chinese labour for construction, for instance. But it can have many more practical results than Western aid, which tends to disappear into the pockets of consultants.

While Chinese investment is not the immediate answer to the present economic crisis faced by Jamaica and other countries, in the medium term, just as America is increasingly dependent on Chinese investment, so will be its humbler neighbours in the Caribbean.

To paraphrase an old Negro spiritual, in the 21st century China will have “the whole world in its hands”.