I will look at this more but the tone of the Executive Summary strikes me as hyped when it comes to expansion. What I have read so far reads more like a glossy sales brochure than an assessment.

China has long been in Africa and in many ways was more effective at it than the US or the USSR because the Chinese tended toward a low-tech, man power intensive model. In contrast, the US talks low tech and adaptable project models that better meet local needs but in securing funding we often get driven toward high (or higher than the Chinese) tech solutions.

Cuturally Communist Chinese models for communal agriculture in many cases better matched cultural tendencies even when they failed dramatically in execution.

And even during the height of the Cold War, U.S. "allies" like Mobutu were more than willing to drag their skirts in front of the Chinese to prompt renewed fervor among their Western suitors. Witness this paragraph:

Moreover, Beijing believes this history compares very favorably with the poor political and security legacy left to Africa by the U.S.-Soviet superpower rivalry of the Cold War era that stoked wars in places like Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia and created alliances with corrupt strongmen like Zaire’s President Mobutu and Somalia’s President Barre.
The PRC was also a player in those arenas as well as in others.

Overall I am not impressed. CSIS is usually much better.

Tom