The Chinese are getting even smarter - dumb American and British governments are really in trouble now

Fixing China's image in Africa, one student at a time.

The Chinese are copying what the Roman and British Empires did for hundreds of years.
They are offering a scholarship program for 12,000 Africans to study in China.
It was a very successful policy for both Rome and Britain.
I think it will be very successful for China too.

http://gu.com/p/3gjm6/tw

The Chinese are being smart in other ways too.

E.G. the large factory complex they are building in Ethiopia.
It will eventually employ 10,000 Ethiopians and export $4bn worth of cheap shoes a year.

E.G. the many natural resource deals, China is and has negotiated in Africa.
Often these deals include some sort of infrastructure improvement component to them.
Improvements to rail, roads, communications etc.
After all the Chinese need some way of getting the resources to an African port for export to China.

Just about all of the engineers are currently Chinese, but most of the labor is African.

It is creating lots of jobs for Africans and as we have seen from the linked article - the Chinese are helping to educate Africans so they can comprise a larger percentage of the engineers or other well paid employees for the Chinese natural resource deals in the future.

Meanwhile the dumb American and British governments favor wasting trillions of dollars making pointless war and bombing people to recruit thousands more Islamic Extremists or spending billions every year bribing corrupt despotic governments.
For the $5tn+ they have wasted on the Iraq and Afghan wars they could of educated EVERY single Muslim college aid kid who qualifies for a college education for free in the last 10 years - how many more friends in the Muslim world would that of brought them?
It would of cost a heck of a lot less than $5tn.

Somehow I think the Chinese approach is more persuasive.