Politics and harvest

[APeacefulWarrior]

Actually, China is South Africa's biggest trading partner, and our political ties are equally strong, which is why we denied the Dalai Lama a visa. Something which caused major outrage here. We have had a "look East policy" since the end of apartheid.

According to the Wiki page on SA's foreign trade in total, China is only SA's top trade partner in terms of imports, and the big money is in exports - where the top countries are the US, Germany, and Japan, with China a distant fifth.  Plus, those three combined also outweigh China in the import category by about half again as much.  And one might as well count them as combined since they're all close allies.  The loss of them as trade partners would be a big hit.

But I don't dispute that China and SA (as well as other parts of Africa) are forming closer ties.  That's certain.  The US seems to have a real blind spot to Africa in general, and that may end up hurting them in the long run since Africa now has several rapidly-growing countries who are starting to get serious about international partners.

As for war drums and trade considerations, China has published in their state owned newspaper that war with the US is looking increasingly likely if the US doesn't back off in the South China Sea situation, so naturally trade doesn't seem to be a deciding factor. I should also have mentioned when I said "BRICS" in a war situation, I mostly refer to a Russian/China alliance, SA and Brazil hardly have military capability to speak of, which is just wonderful.

You don't honestly think the US is going to get militarily involved in the South Sea situation, right?  That's all just diplomatic saber-rattling, and it's mostly for the benefit of citizens at home so they can put on a show of strength for their respective nationalists. Plus, as far as the Dalai Lama goes, Obama might have met with him this year, but the US continues to NOT support Tibetan independence and fully recognizes China's control over it - a major factor in keeping the Chinese happy.

And as for a Russia/China alliance, honestly, just look at the numbers.  Five out of their top six trade partners are all either western countries or closely western-allied.  The only exception is Taiwan.  In the meantime, Russia is number nine on the list, and represents a tiny fraction of the trade from the higher-ranked countries.  China would never go to war against the west on Russia's behalf except in the most unimaginably extreme of circumstances.  

Trade is a deciding factor when you are talking about literal orders of magnitude in difference between the amounts involved.

The economies of China and the US are far too intertwined for them to ever seriously go toe-to-toe.   If they ever suddenly cut off trade with each other, and China leveraged all the US debt they hold to harm the Dollar, both countries would cause gigantic damage to each other's economy without actually gaining *anything* substantial from it.    It's like a kinder gentler version of MAD.  Basically, the more economically co-dependent the major powers are, the less sense going to war makes because it would simply be too costly.