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Oh, Modern Slavery, I know that. That's what's so scary to me. In Antigua (where I do work and have many local friends), what I wrote above has been their sentiment. Their government is broke, and the US doesn't do anything but restrict what little money they have coming in. The Chinese show up and build roads, docks, and even a Cricket Stadium for them. My friends have pointed this out to me. There are benefits to be had, including fishing rights, etc. for the Chinese. I worry about this as far as Chinese influence on the world - they are doing "good", but what's the cost?

Jennette, the Chinese ARE NOT doing this to be nice.

5 years ago, they promised to rehabilitate a section of Saigon River (in district 3) in Vietnam. The value of real estate changed, the Chinese never completed the jobs; now, raw sewage floats down the river where poor neighborhoods sit at edge water.

Just wanted to make a comment to you Leonard. First great show.

Secondly people from Ghana are not called Ghanese they are called "Ghanaians".

You should also do a show on China in South America...I think some of the same dynamics you are discussing in relation to Africa apply to the Chinese presence in places like Ecuador. The last time I was in Southern Ecuador, the increased Chinese presence was striking...very unlike my experiences there 15 years ago.

This issue is complex one, one thing for certain: it's about money. Not only is China importing cheap labor some are FORCED LABOR and BONDED LABOR. This makes it extremely prohibitive for the Africans to have jobs on their own land, it oppresses them.

We work with victims of forced migration who had been tricked into going to china to work, once there they were shipped elsewhere to places like Africa or Middle East as cheap cheap labor.

I've seen this same practice going on in the Caribbean. The Chinese have been doing a lot of work to help in these poor nations. The locals usually point at the Chinese (and, as it turns out in the Caribbean, the Cubans) and say "look, they are here building roads/docks/etc for us; what is the US doing?" Our style seems to be impose sanctions on countries when we don't like what they are doing, which only makes the poor poorer. The Chinese are making friends by doing good there. This is a dangerous position for us to be in, in my opinion.

The subject of Chinese in Africa should be a very tricky subject for Westerners to discuss, but I've seen a lot of hubris. I've been with Westerners who sniffed that the Chinese were taking jobs away from the local African population by using Chinese workers on projects there. But what the Chinese were doing didn't seem to different that U.S. farmers offloading grain in the form of aid to Africa. What each country was doing was providing jobs to their people, and getting rid of their excess capacity. The U.S. has excess grain, China has excess labor.