I guess WWIV has been on a slow burn for going on three years now.
More like since Deng Xiaoping initiated the modern Chinese economic strategy in the '80s to control the West through trade.
The West did a fine job of this themselves. Outsourcing to poorer countries is what has made the West so wealthy for so long - goods whose price is subsidized by cheap labor. Now that China and other countries have caught up, the West doesn't get the same discount, but they also don't have their own manufacturing because they all outsourced. We did this to ourselves.