It is well known that, in the political field, the 20th century brought about a strong and, as it turned out, omnipresent trend toward disintegration of former empires and the formation in their place of nation-states all over the crumbling colonial world.
In the realm of economy, however, the development went in the opposite direction — toward internationalization of economic life and further — toward a higher and specific form of economic integration. Such integration first emerged in its classic — regional or "neighborly"- form, like the European Union or the comprehensive North American Free Trade Agreement.
But with the dawn of the new millennium, economic integration began to take a new shape involving the "twinning" of economies of some countries belonging to different continents and to different social-economic models. The highly unusual pair of the United States and China offers the most striking example of such a rapidly emerging "Siamese connection."