You could tell as soon as the plane landed in Madrid that China has become the most important country in Europe.
Very few foreign heads of state have attracted this kind of wall-to-wall attention and exercised such power over governments during their visits to Europe as Li Keqiang did during his three-country deal-making sweep across the continent this week.
But Mr. Li is not a head of state: He is China's vice-premier, or third-in-command, and this visit, with a delegation of 150 officials and business people, was one of half a dozen by senior Chinese leaders over the past year. (He will also be visiting the United States next week.) His stature did not prevent him, in a few days, from transforming Europe's economic picture to an extent that no other foreign figure has been able to do.
China, in short, has become Europe's rescuer. After international bond markets and Europe's banks have priced the debt of Europe's periphery countries out of reach, China is eager to park its money there with little concern for risk. With its vast currency reserves, which topped $2.85-trillion this week, and insatiable appetite for places to put that money, China is the one country that can pull the continent out of its economic crisis. That reserve is three times the size of Europe's entire bailout fund for troubled economies and banks.
By buying $7.5-billion in troubled Spanish bonds within hours after Mr. Li arrived there this weekend, China may have staved off a Spanish debt crisis (though several economies, including Spain's, are still in deep trouble). A reported purchase of at least $5-billion in Portuguese debt may have bought Lisbon a few more days before it needs a bailout.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg: The Wall Street Journal estimated last week that China now holds almost 10 per cent of all national debt in the euro zone, or about $900-billion worth. And, as premier Wen Jiabao pledged in Greece last year, China seems determined to buy enough European debt to return the continent to economic growth.
But it is a reciprocal relationship: Europe now matters to China more than any other place in the world.
The European Union, with 400 million consumers and the largest economy in the world, is China's largest trading partner, with close to $500-billion changing hands last year, most of it in Chinese exports to Europe. Because of this, China often appears even more interested in restoring economic growth to EU states than those states do themselves.
In exchange for allowing the continent to postpone an economic collapse, though, China expects a price.
The EU has built its success on a formula of open, unrestricted trade among its 27 member states, and steep tariff and legal walls preventing most outsiders from entering that market.
China, in bailing out Europe, is asking for its goods to be allowed in without barriers - and for Europe to start selling technology, automobiles and most significantly military technology and weapons without restrictions to China.
"We hope that the EU will relax restrictions on high-tech exports to China … and develop trade relations that are balanced and sustainable," Mr. Li wrote in an op-ed titled, "China will be more open to the world" that was published Wednesday in the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
China is asking Europe to loosen or eliminate its embargo, dating back to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, on providing China with arms or other military equipment.
After investing heavily in Europe, the Chinese seem to have won a warm response to this overture. Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign minister, released a policy paper calling the arms embargo "a major impediment for developing stronger EU-China co-operation on foreign policy and security measures."
This stance has angered the United States, whose diplomats worry that Europe will arm a fast-militarizing China, but the Europeans may have little choice but to accept a new relationship with the country that is keeping their banks from collapsing.
Back in Beijing, the huge investment in Europe serves a triple purpose for China: It helps build political and economic influence in Europe; it provides leverage for China to open consumer markets in tariff-protected Europe, and it allows China to diversify its currency holdings, which are currently dollar-denominated but will become much more euro-heavy as a result of these deals.