made in china or trade with china?

the economist recently featured a story on the economic relationships betwixt africa and china.  the chinese have been interested in the continent since the cold war and have been investing in africa since the mid-90s.  the chart below shows the exponential trade growth between the two over the past 15 years.

i normally take data sets and publications from the heritage foundation with a grain of salt and a stiff drink.  but this was a discussion in one of my grad school courses a couple years ago and i've heard relatively little about it since. 

source

but one of the more interesting things in the second chart is that china's greatest outward investment is in the americas (ex-u.s.) at 19.5%.  isn't that supposedly our investment turf?  and keep in mind, these numbers don't include bond (debt) transactions. 

china's portfolio is pretty diverse on the surface, but the majority of their investments (66.9%) are in up-and-coming economies.  if current trends continue, i'm hypothesizing china will have significant underlying influence in shaping the global economy over the next century - more so than "just being" china.