Can such an interlinked world without the West exist without one leading nation, among many, trying to enforce trade rules, mediate disputes, deal with natural and manmade disasters, police shipping lanes, et al? And if, in such a world, China is going to be the leader, can it provide these public goods? I must admit I am still skeptical, since China still suffers from a low level of trust from other nations.

Even if the level of trust were higher, is there any evidence that China is at all eager to provide these services, or build some kind of alternative China-run economic bloc? I thought China was still extremely hot on trade with the West.

I'm not sure what sort of emerging system Ely is referring to:

What is emerging is a “World Without the West.” This world, led by China, rests on a rapid deepening of interconnectivity within the developing world—in flows of goods, money, people and ideas—that is surprisingly autonomous from Western control, resulting in the development of a new, parallel international system, with its own distinctive set of rules, institutions, and currencies of power.

Take any ten countries that trade with each other. Then take any other arbitrarily chosen country or group of countries. I assume you are always going to be able identify substantial flows of goods, money, people and ideas passing among the first ten countries that neither pass through, nor are controlled by the country or countries in the second group. What is surprising in this?

And doesn't trade benefit the world generally? Trade among China and its trading partners makes those countries richer. And as long as those countries are still trading with us too, then we benefit indirectly from their mutual trade relations and the increasing prosperity it brings them, even if we are not managing or financing those trade relations ourselves and taking a cut.

And what makes this trade a "system"? Is there some evidence that these exchanges of goods, people and ideas are creating an isolated trade bloc, where all that activity is sucking wealth out of the systems in which we participate? Or are China and its trading partners still trading at healthy levels with everyone else, so that all their trade is creating wealth that then flows into Western trade?

There is something rather control freaky about this way of viewing trade in the developing world. Is Ely suggesting it be the goal of the West to control and oversee all of the world's trade, and keep the developing world in a condition of financial dependence on the West?