For the world's China watchers, like myself, there's a new dynamic duo in town, the Swiss authors of Serge Michel & Michel Beuret who have recently signed their John Hancocks to their fresh-off-the-press China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing's Expansion in Africa.

So I've got the book and I've been meticulously working my way through it.

Safari is another of those stark assessments of China's involvement on the African continent, an investigative look into a region where only the world's most intrepid journalists and truth-seekers dare set foot. Amidst this ailing continent of near-permanent depravity, rampant corruption, easily-treatable chronic disease, and on-again off-again brutal, bloody war, there tread the seeming bravest of the brave: China's nouveau riche. Numbering in the thousands, these are the hopeful men and women who have cast out into the wide world in search of their fortunes across two massive continents to heed former Chinese supremo Jiang Zemin's call to "go abroad and make money."

Well, the jury is indeed out on China's questionable activities in Africa. There are those who laud China's efforts to raise the living standard of a people who find themselves repeatedly sidelined and babied by the planet's developed economic powerhouses. Others resent the Chinese for being less than candid about their real African aims, with the PRC dangling juicy carrots in front of the salivating self-interested African dictators and pseudo-democracies who are only too pliant to trumpet the PRC's apparent munificence while China uses the opportunity to further sink its tentacles deeper into the resource-rich African soil.

These competiting -- yet equally valid -- impressions of China's African master plan is what makes their involvement there at once so marvellous and terrifying.

But, tody, for the uninitiated, I supply a brief overview of what these two competing narratives entail, both for the Chinese and for Africa:

The "Pro-China" Benevolent View:

We live in an open world where even the most Machiavellian Chinese businessman or bureaucrat wouldn't deign to brazenly perpetrate the most crass of moneymaking schemes without at least fearing the censure of the globe's Africa watchers. This is the wellspring from which The Benevolent View derives its strength.

Basically, this view contends that since the late '90s, the Chinese people have heeded their leaders' calls to resume the nation's former leading role in the colonially-ravaged continent by spoiling their former "brethren" with financial incentives and infrastructure gifts as a means of uplifting the African people. This is the Chinese version of "big brother."

It's clear that the Chinese have an interest in perpetuating this porous myth, since it benefits them greatly. The staggering number of exclusivity contracts and resource concessions which African governments have offered up to the PRC on a silver platter as the latter have bequeathed their "no strings attached" cosmetic improvements and financial incentives to them have made Chinese mega-tycoons out of former paupers. In defending the actions of the Chinese, this is what Africa's leaders are wont to refer to as the China-Africa "win-win," or China's "sympathetic capitalism," which is 180-degree opposed to the way the Great Powers used to press their colonial influence in a former era.

What's generally hidden in all the cash-lending hoopla are the gory details. Few realize that agreements inked between Chinese and Africans stipulate that 70% or more of such infrastructure contracts -- including, among others, the improvement or wholly-new construction of bridges, roads, and rail lines -- must be helmed by Chinese construction firms, a non-negotiable condition before any aid or interest-free loan money can be deposited into African treasuries or before the first spade breaks dirt.

The second -- less pernicious, though equally exclusionary -- aspect of Chinese business in Africa deals with the workers themselves, imported, like the construction materials themselves, straight from China. Laborers are customarily holed up in secluded quarters, under 24-hour lockdown, with their passports stowed away under lock and key and away from the prying eyes of locals and investigative journalists alike (there is even photographic evidence of this in China Safari).

The "Anti-China" Villanous View:

China has made it patently clear that it aims to become the world's second superpower, and conducts itself apprpriately.

Africa plays a key role in their universal strategy, given China's resource scarcity for certain key resources -- namely crude oil and uranium (yellow cake) -- and watch as the Chinese ladle out aid and advantages in copious sums as a means of quite literally bribing their way into Africa's good graces. With the Americans, French, and Italians already having scooped up the key Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf territories, China aims to "hit 'em where they ain't" (sorry for the Babe-esque baseball analogy) in going after Africa's goodies. As the Chinese have come bearing (Trojan?) gifts, the Africans have been only too happy to award them with keys to the castle.

But all is not golden.

In Algeria, the Chinese are referred to as "Ali Baba" (you decide whether this is for their generous nature or for their thieving ways). In Senegal, Niger, Cameroon, and across other regions of the former Francafrique, frequent protests erupt and there are on-again, off-again boycotts of Chinese-owned shops and Chinese-dominated shopping districts, in addition to spates of kidnappings as the have-nots have been simmering on the sidelines as the Chinese have had their way with things.

In meetings with Africa's cabinet-level ministers and presidents, the Chinese have torn a page out of Sun Tzu's ancient playbook: keep thine "enemies" closer than thine comrades. Here's one example how the Chinese will typically attempt to endear themselves to their interlocutors during negotiation sessions: a Chinese delegation member will usually be assigned to study the preferences of their African opposite numbers. In one storied case, a Gabonese minister who was a fan of architecture and Greco-Roman history was shocked to receive a phone call from his Chinese opposite number shortly after the conclusion of a successful meeting discussing these very topics, with a exclusive invite to a European architecture exhibit the next time the minister was in Europe.

The "anti-Chinese" viewpoint explains that this is all a calculated attempt on the part of the Chinese to approach their ultimate aim, which is to overtake Japan as the world's second largest economy.

So which weltanschauung wins? Well, it's paradox. For even if the Chinese are as mendacious as some experts claim, the majority of Africa's population is gaining tremendously as it becomes -- yet again -- an unwitting pawn in a global game of realpolitik. The Chinese want this badly, and they're willing to do anything they can to secure their position in the world and they're in it for the very long haul. Free loans, scholarships, planes, trains, and automobiles. Whatever it takes to get to the top.

It's just that with the world being as open as it is today, it's becoming harder and harder to hide the harm and damage their "peaceful rise" is leaving in its wake.