Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
So your African President signs a deal with the Chinese to allow them exclusive access to exploit a certain range of natural and mineral resources for the next 50 years in exchange for the Chinese to build a showpiece sports stadium (and quietly make a deposit into a certain Swiss bank account). And the Chinese will import their own (trustworthy) labour to do most of this work.
The deal in actuality will only be valid until a few colonels get tired of the crumbs, decide that the President needs an intimate meeting with a bullet, and figures out that they can earn much more from nationalizing the investment and selling the goods to the highest bidder than they could from bribes.

Bribing your way into African contracts is nothing new... it didn't always work out well for Western companies back in the day, and I suspect that the Chinese may encounter a few surprises down the way. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a severe anti-Chinese backlash coming along in many of these countries, especially where they are importing large numbers of laborers and acquiring agricultural land. The way that many Chinese treat Africans personally may emerge as an irritant as well. I'm remembering a comment from an Angolan businessman, along the lines of "we thought the whites were racist, we didn't know what racism was until we dealt with the Chinese".

We'll see how it works out, but I suspect that China's neocolonial venture in Africa will trip up on many of the same issues that have derailed other neocolonial ventures. As long as the money is coming in they're likely to be tolerated, but when the mines and factories and farms are built and the money's going out, that's likely to change.

I don't think it's accurate to say the Chinese are "shouldering the US out of the way". They're simply operating in environments far beyond the risk tolerance of US companies.