China's African Empire: The country that captured a continent

This is the long and turbulent history of China's attempts to influence African states – and how China succeeded in buying access to the rich natural resources, and the millions of consumers, on Africa's continent.


In the fifteenth century, Zheng He's Treasure Ships arrived in East Africa, and marvelled at the ostriches, rhinoceroses and giraffes they found there. In the 1950s, Mao and his comrades cultivated new African leaders – Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania and a you...