While Americans fume and fuss over manufactured issues and concocted threats, China is moving swiftly and confidently to take over the world economy – and thereby conquer the world. This is “the New World Order” that disgruntled Americans should be worrying about instead of yapping at President Obama’s heels like a pack of hounds following the wrong scent. The threat to their “freedom” will not come from creeping Socialism in America, but from Communism in China. And the Chinese make no pretense of tolerating dissent; the state rules supreme and the citizens obey – or else (see news photo above).

A report in GlobalPost by Kathleen E. McLaughlin yesterday provides an insight into the change taking place in the world economy. Here’s how it begins:

When Paul Volcker last spoke to the International Institute of Finance — the global industry association of banks and other financial institutions — the United States was the world financial leader and China’s economy was still sleeping in the shadows. Returning this week to address the world’s bankers at their spring meeting in the Chinese capital, this time as chairman of President Obama’s economic recovery advisory team, Volcker spoke about the shifting balance of economic power in the world, where China has become the third-largest economy.

In the United States, he said, “Once proud banks and investment banks have literally disappeared or found themselves reliant on government support. We look hopefully to the new China, now economically powerful, as one of the few countries of growth in this year of 2009.”

China’s new power and potential on the global economic horizon was a main point of discussion among the bankers and economists who met in Beijing this week. As Western bankers expressed remorse and contrition over the global financial crisis, Chinese bankers spoke of ambitious plans to expand around the world.

Add this information to reports of China buying up raw-material resources all over the world, strengthening trade links in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and stockpiling the rare metals used to make electronic gadgets, and you will reach the inescapable conclusion that the “sleeping giant” of yesteryear is fully awake and on the march to world domination.

The danger to Americans is clear. To survive, the U.S. economy has leaned heavily on Chinese credit. As Ms. McLaughlin reported:

Even though Chinese officials have publicly voiced their concern over the safety of their country’s massive U.S. dollar investments, the U.S. remains the safest large economy in which China can park its investment, the bankers said. And the debt-ridden United States will remain dependent on China’s foreign-currency investments for at least the near future. With that changing financial relationship the balance of power will move even more.

There has been a “shift in the center of financial gravity from the West to the East,” said Jing Ulrich, managing director and chairman of J.P. Morgan’s China equities division.

The United States can protest as strongly as it likes against China’s underhanded tactics – export limits on rare metals, unfair tire production practices, keeping the yen artificially low against the dollar… But China doesn’t have to listen. The U.S. is like a credit card customer complaining about an increase in interest rates – the only real remedy is to pay off the debt. And China’s abusive trade policies make it impossible for the U.S. to do that.

But China, the dragon in the room, is ignored by American protesters. Conspiracy theorists are still focusing on bogeymen like the Bilderberg Club, an annual assembly of the west’s richest and most powerful financiers who supposedly run the world through their hand-picked political puppets. Apparently, some of the protesters demonizing President Obama think he is one of the puppets. But they’re barking up the wrong tree: the Bilderberg Club is yesterday’s news. I doubt that western financiers have much influence in Communist China.