Colonizers or partners?

""We are back where we started," Wilfred Collins Wonani, who leads the Chamber of Commerce here, said, sighing at the loss of one of the city's biggest employers. "Sending raw materials out, bringing cheap manufactured goods in. This isn't progress. It is colonialism."

Chinese officials and their African allies like to call their growing relationship a win-win proposition, a rising tide that lifts all boats in China's ever-widening sea of influen"There is no doubt China has been good for Zambia," said Felix Mutati, Zambia's minister of finance. "Why should we have a bad attitude toward the Chinese when they are doing all the right things? They are bringing investment, world-class technology, jobs, value addition. What more can you ask for?"

But across Africa, and especially in the relatively robust economies of southern Africa, there are clear winners and losers. Textile mills and other factories here in Zambia have suffered and even closed as cheap Chinese goods flood the world market, eliminating jobs in a country where less than half the adult population has formal employment. And the Chinese investment in copper mining here has left a trail of heartbreak and recrimination after one of the worst industrial accidents in Zambian history: a blast at a Chinese-owned explosives factory in Chambishi in 2005 that killed 46 people, most of them in their 20s. This year, China pledged $20 billion to finance trade and infrastructure across the continent over the next three years. In Zambia alone, China plans to invest $800 million in the next few years." (thanks Yaz)