Keen-eyed readers of this incisive foreign policy blog will have noticed that empire building's gone out of fashion, unless you're Chinese.
Their little method goes like this, we call it Reverse Santa:
Lend Africans vast sums of money, with assets like airports, railways, energy companies and ports as security.
Africans remarkably fail to pay back the loans.
Chinese take all the Africans' stuff.
LSP
