Growing Pains and Growing Alliances: China, Timber and Africa

There are many reasons to account for this seemingly unlikely set of alliances with a most distant neighbor. Among them is the diminished presence of the United States and other Western powers on the continent, with the majority of the attention focused presently on the Middle East. The standard response of the United States in recent years to local conflict in African nations has been to withdraw both troops and civilians, reduce military aid and issue security advisories to would-be visitors and investors. During the Ethiopia-Eritrea war in the late 1990s, China's government, viewing the war as an opportunity, in the absence of an American presence, sent over even more citizens to expand its influence on, and strengthen its connections to Ethiopia.