When Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor indicated this week it was interested in acquiring the US-Italian giant Fiat Chrysler there were flutters of concern in America and Europe that this acquisition could mark the start of a major move by China into a sector that has long underpinned their own economies.

Investors were by and large pleased at the possibility of being bought out at a top dollar premium and investment banks scrambled to assemble merger and acquisition teams to win lucrative mandates to see through and fund any deal.

In the event, Great Wall later said that it had merely been researching the possibility of buying one of the world’s leading carmakers. It had not yet made any formal approach to Fiat Chrysler and no bid was in the immediate offing.

But in even referring to the possibility of this acquisition, the Chinese company demonstrated the way the world is moving, the inexorable shift of manufacturing power away from North America and Europe to Asia, particularly to China and India. Beijing has earmarked the automotive sector as a key to further economic expansion. When Geely bought the loss-making Swedish firm Volvo from Ford seven years ago, there was little confidence that it could make the success that it has of the purchase. The year before, the little-known Chinese firm BAIC had bought Saab technology from General Motors, after failing to buy both Volvo and Saab outright.

Moreover, while world attention is focused on Western and Japanese makers of electric vehicles, principally the eye-catching Tesla range and the more prosaic Renault and Nissan brands, the Chinese have been busy developing electric engines. This research, heavily-backed by Beijing, is as much to do with China’s need to slash its own dangerous pollution levels as it is to steal a march on outside rivals. Nevertheless, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Chinese firms have also been investing in automotive companies such as a German door lock maker and a Dutch manufacturer of car roofs. Thus far there has been less success for China’s carmakers in the United States where the Trump mantra of “America First” now echoes loudly. It is reminiscent of US resistance when the Japanese auto sector began to set up in the States. But there are similar circumstances between the Japanese arrival and the likely push into America by the Chinese. In the 1970s and 80s, Japan was by far the biggest buyer of US government debt. Today that position is held by Beijing. Whatever predictable protectionist sentiments, America - with its professed commitment to globalization - cannot risk a collapse of the mighty dollar by angering Chinese investors in its huge government debt market.

Nor should it be overlooked that it was an Indian company that made the first major Western automotive acquisition. Tata bought the UK’s loss-making Jaguar Land Rover and has turned the company around.

It, therefore, seems very likely that within 50 years, US manufacturing dominance and the highly-protected European car, aerospace and engineering sectors will be very different. Indian, Chinese and perhaps Indonesian firms will have acquired Western firms or become market leaders pushing the likes of Boeing, Airbus, Ford, Volkswagen, General Electric and Siemens from all the top slots. The balance of world manufacturing power is starting to shift.