Germany and China are this world’s two greatest export economies, by far. After heading the chart as the leading global exporter in recent years, suddenly, a few months ago, Germany was eclipsed by its chief rival in international trade, China. Now China has taken its trade battle right on to German soil near the ancient city of Cologne.

There, within view of the venerable old Cologne Cathedral, China is building a pristine new factory to produce concrete pumps.

“Sany, one of China’s flagship machinery groups, is set to become the first engineering company from the Middle Kingdom to launch production in Germany, a move that presages an attack by China’s rapidly advancing industrial companies on Europe’s engineering market” (Financial Times,August 11).

This is the latest in a concerted effort by China to challenge its major competitor on its home ground—and it’s being aided and abetted by the powers-that-be in Berlin. This is the power of “the merchants” in action (Revelation 18).

Germany and China have become increasingly interdependent economies. The recent presence of China in the Mediterranean and Europe, and increasingly in Europe’s leading nation, Germany, is part of a tit-for-tat deal between the two. Even as Sany’s Cologne facility reaches its commissioning date, German industrialists are working to establish a strong foothold on Chinese soil.

Recently, the New York Times highlighted this phenomenon:

While the Moscow-Berlin political relationship gets a lot of attention, German companies have come to realize that the money to be made in Russia is overshadowed by the prospects even farther afield in China.Germany is China’s biggest trading partner by far in Europe, and the trade is increasing by leaps and bounds, especially for high-value electrical and electronic goods. Germany’s car industry, which suffered greatly during the global financial meltdown, has recovered thanks in large part to a surge in Chinese demand for the top range of German cars …. Even the big German retailing chains, like Metro, are setting up shop there.

While the Federal Republic of Germany (then commonly known as West Germany to distinguish it from then Communist East Germany) and the People’s Republic of China established diplomatic relations in 1972, essentially it has been largely over the last half decade that Germany has cemented the closest of ties with China. Germany’s federal government website declares that “China is Germany’s most important economic partner in Asia and Germany is China’s leading trading partner in Europe. In the face of the global economic and financial crisis, stable cooperation between the two countries’ strongly export-oriented economies is of great importance.”

That site points to 2004 as the year that trade ties were cemented by mutual agreement between Germany and China: “Since the joint declaration issued by Federal Chancellor Schröder and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on 6 May, 2004, Sino-German relations are described as a ‘strategic partnership in global responsibility.’ China views Germany as its most important partner in Europe both economically and politically—its ‘gateway to Europe.’”

In other words, Germany and China see theirs as a “global responsibility” in the wake of the impact of America’s fiscal irresponsibility on the global economy. They see it as their unique responsibility as the two leading national economies of the world to fill the gap created by the demise of the U.S. global economic leadership that has prevailed since World War ii.

Yet the Sany initiative is rather unique, as it pits Chinese enterprise at the very beating heart of Germany’s export economy—the engineering and machinery core of its industrial center. The Financial Times even prefaced its story on Sany with the headline “Chinese Push Into Germany’s Heart and Soul,” noting within the article that “Sany, which makes a wide range of machinery from excavators to mobile cranes, overtook Germany’s Putzmeister as the world’s largest concrete pumps manufacturer by sales in 2006.”

So what’s going on here?

Well, it’s a unique kind of trade war being played out to the temporary mutual benefit of both Germany and China—a relationship of mutual convenience as each trades off the other in an effort to accelerate their individual efforts to dominate world trade. With the United States patently broke and just not prepared to admit it, the realists in Berlin and Beijing are forging ahead to vie for global economic dominance.

Which nation will win in this grand clash of the titans?

We can tell you who will be the winner in the short term. We can also tell you who the winner will be in the longer term—and we can tell you who wins ultimately at the conclusion of this battle of the titans. These outcomes are clearly documented in the prophecies of your Bible that are presently racing toward fulfillment through the daily events headlined in world news.

The answer lies in a comparing the prophecies of Revelation 13-17 with those of Isaiah 21, Ezekiel 38 and Revelation 21, and simply allowing the Bible to interpret itself.

But there’s a key you need to unlock these prophecies. It’s a key that was revealed through Herbert Armstrong’s writings in his book The United States and Britain in Prophecy. If you read and comprehend that book (which we will provide upon request, gratis) and then read our booklet Russia and China in Prophecy with an open mind, the outcome to this clash of the world’s two greatest markets should become apparent. The outcome is as startling as it is revelatory in the most profound sense. For the outcome, believe it or not, actually impinges dramatically upon your own incredible human potential—your own immediate and long-term future!

Even as the events in Germany and China accelerate toward their current competitive trade war becoming hotter—and soon—other events involving the U.S., Britain and its dominions (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) are accelerating them toward subservience to one of these great powers. To find out the fascinating outcome to this whole dramatic scenario that will soon powerfully impact your life and that of your loved ones, add our latest booklet, He Was Right!, to your list of requests for our literature, which we remind you will be sent to you with no charge.

If you have read thus far, you owe it to yourself to check more deeply into this. You may, indeed, find the answers that you have been searching for as to what today’s global disorder is all about and where it is leading! And the answer may very well surprise you, tantalize you and open up a whole realm of untapped resources within you! Indeed, it may unlock your great, God-given human potential!

Isn’t it worth at least a look? And it’s all given to you gratis, with no follow-up, even as our Head has commanded (Matthew 10:8). The rest is up to you.