Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"While Western interest in Africa has flagged, China has stepped into the breach with growing ambition, seeing vast opportunities emerging in what the Chinese had hitherto regarded as Europe’s backyard. . . . The centrepiece of China’s long march into Africa, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), was launched in 2000 at a ceremony in Beijing attended by representatives from forty-four African countries. . . . By 2010, trade between Africa and China had risen tenfold over the decade to nearly $115 billion; . . . In 2010, a senior US official, Johnnie Carson, addressing an audience in Lagos, described China as ‘a very aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals’. But many African leaders welcome China’s pragmatic, business-first approach to Africa, preferring it to Western meddling and lectures about elections, corruption, transparency and human rights." [The Fate of Africa, p. 696-7]