A fascinating CSM story on Chinese investment in Africa:

Brad Phillips, director of Persecution International, an aid group working in South Sudan, has seen the destruction firsthand. “The Chinese are equal partners with Khartoum when it comes to exploiting resources and locals here,” he says. “Their only interest here is their own.” He would love to see the Chinese sponsor a school here, he says, or a clinic, or an agricultural program, or “anything for the people.” But there is nothing like that in sight. Just miles of desolate land.

“The Chinese simply do not care about us,” says Martin Buywomo, Paloich’s mayor. “They have no contact. They never even came to my tent to pay respects. They think we are lesser people.” A member of the Shilluk tribe who attended British mission schools, Mr. Buywomo puts down the worn copy of George Eliot’s 19th-century classic “Silas Marner” he is reading and continues sadly. “We see them in their trucks but they overlook us. If they saw us dying on the road, they would overlook us.”

Buywomo rearranges the Chinese-made plastic pink flowers on his desk. “This is colonialism all over again.”

I doubt that US investors like Chevron built many schools or clinics, but accusations of “scorched-earth clearances of the indigenous population” don’t sound good for China’s National Petroleum Corporation. Read the full story.

[HT: Drezner]