The concerns of this book are with the shift in the balance of the global economic order which has been taking place – a shift which has become increasingly apparent over the past five years. A steady move of industrial capacity from West to East has occurred; the rates of economic growth of key Asian countries have outstripped (many by a high margin) those of advanced Western economies; the financial crisis that the Western world has experienced since 2008 has severely weakened Western economies while barely denting the rates of growth of some Asian countries; and a range of Asian countries have come to play a central role in global investment, whether through their sovereign wealth funds or private/public corporations and companies. Lucrative construction contracts, oil concessions, and development projects—which Western companies dominated in the past—are now being won by Asian companies.

The role of the Gulf region has been of particular significance in the current re-structuring of the global economy. In some respects the Gulf, itself part of Asia, constitutes one dimension of the shift in economic power. Despite the problems faced by Dubai in 2008-10, the Gulf economies have continued a rapid rate of expansion through the financial crisis; their sovereign wealth funds and major corporations have gained a central role in global investment flows; and they have acquired a key stake in a significant sector of global industrial production: petrochemicals.

In another respect, the re-direction of the economies of the Gulf states is reflective of, rather than part of, the critical shift of economic power from West to East. The economies of the Gulf have traditionally been closely linked to those of the Western world. Yet most oil now flows East, not West, and the development of the petrochemical industry (the cornerstone of the Gulf economies’ hope for a future as industrial powers) is also now more dependent on Asian than Western markets. How the Gulf countries balance and manage their relationships with East/South/ Southeast Asia and the West is, therefore, an important issue for the future for all of the parties involved (the Gulf countries, the West, and non-Middle Eastern Asia).

Nonetheless, it is inaccurate to represent the re-structuring of the Gulf 's global economic relationships as a simple matter of Western decline and Asian growth. While an overall shift has indeed taken place, the shift is not simply from West to East. Asian countries themselves relate to the global change in different ways. An analysis of Gulf- Asia trade, for example, reveals that not all Asian countries have benefited in the same way. The key factor in the direction of Gulf trade is that the share accounted for by industrialized and newly-industrialized countries (whether Western or Asian) has declined relative to that of particular industrializing countries. As will be shown in Chapter One, the share accounted for by Japan has declined as much (and perhaps more so) than have the shares of the major Western trading nations. The key industrializing countries that have gained substantially in market share are China and India. In 2011, China for the first time dislodged Japan from its long-established ranking as the second largest trading partner of the Gulf countries, and was only just behind the European Union. Contrary to widespread perceptions, moreover, it is India and not China whose trade has been growing most dramatically in the years since 2005, although India's trade started from a lower base.