“Power is moving from West to East,” says a top Gulf investor as the Arab world, distrustful of the US, builds wide-ranging commercial links with Asia.

For more than 1,000 years, the Silk Road that ran for 11,000km from the Mediterranean across Asia to China brought east and west together and helped lay the foundations of the modern world. The fabled network circled the planet, until, in the 16th century, it faded into history as ships were able to transport goods cheaper and faster to far-off Cathay than over the hazardous land route that crossed some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain. Now, more than five centuries later, a new Silk Road is emerging, a commercial corridor that runs from the Middle East, with Dubai as its unofficial commercial capital, to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, Mumbai, Chennai, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Tokyo. Trade between the Gulf and Asia is mushrooming with oil, gas, petrochemicals, water technology and banking moving east, while consumer products, 
migrant labour, energy investment, and so on, is moving west. This is establishing a new strategic link that is reviving the historic commerce of the ancient caravan network across the mountains, deserts and steppes of Asia.

Since 2006 Asia has been the main trading partner of the six GCC states, which collectively form the equivalent of the 16th largest economy on the planet. The Standard Chartered Bank estimated that in 2007 some 55% of the GCC’s total trade of $758bn was with Asia. Oil, of course, accounted for much of the eastward traffic but the volume of manufactured goods is increasing. China and Japan ship a wide range of products, from motor vehicles to computers, while India and others supply much of the food consumed in the Middle East. Increasingly, the Gulf states want Chinese technology to bolster their industrial base and diversify their energy-based economies.

The Saudis have established a sprawling 40-square-mile investment zone known as Jazan Economic City near its southern border with Yemen to attract Asian investment capital. In return, the Saudis’ state-run oil giant, Aramco, is a partner in a $5bn refinery and petrochemical plant in China’s Fujian Province. McKinsey and Co, one of the world’s top financial consultancies based in New York, says that between 1995 and 2005, trade between the two regions increased fourfold and projections in mid-2007 were that by 2020, trade between the six GCC states and East Asia would soar from around $59bn a year to $300bn-$500bn.
Oil and gas will remain key Gulf exports to Asia,