Don Beck of "Spiral Dynamics" just sent it to me. Very cool.

Map itself is found at: http://maps.maplecroft.com/china.

A canned PowerPoint-ish movie shows a bunch of details and how to interpret the map here: http://movies.maplecroft.com/china.

The main measures are trade and investment flows. Countries are ranked from low to extreme in integration with China. Most of the extremes are those countries that surround China, to include key trading/investment partners Japan and South Korea (ring any bells for U.S. national security?). Others are found in Middle East (Yemen, Central Asia (Kazakstan), Africa (Sudan, Angola, Congo) and even Latin America (e.g., Chile). Pretty much entire New Core is at least High, as are several Old Core (like Germany, US).

It's a fascinating map. Gives you a sense of China's reach, especially in the Gap, which is, I imagine either on par with ours or larger.

Why is this useful? We need to understand China's growing economic influence throughout the Gap, not to thwart it per se, but because we'll be going to these places more and more and finding China and its interests there more and more. We'll need to take those interests into account (unless we're spoiling for a fight), and we'll need to learn how to leverage those interests into pushing China toward cooperative security schemes in these countries--furthering our interests.

China is a giant train. We want it to go down certain tracks, but no one in their right mind wants to stop or derail this train, because it creates too much good for both China and the world.