There seems to be ample evidence that China is pursuing a mercantilist policy, trying to secure exclusive rights to resources instead of relying on the international market. Much of what they are doing there appears to be related to this policy. In that context, "security contractors" make perfect sense. The real question is whether the US ought to do anything in response. Africa is the second largest continent, and if we can't get enough of strategic overextension in Eurasia, Africa beckons.

Left standing as the only superpower after the Cold War, both the Clinton and Bush administrations elected to try and increase the number of democracies in the world, with some success. However, the cost of continuing to do so, and the strategic risk involved is considerable. Perhaps the Obama administration will focus on humanitarian interventions, but the strategic issue is not much different that the incursion into Iraq - pursuing a continentalist grand strategy. We may not be a Rome or a Napoleonic France or a Hitlerian Germany, but the same question remains for us: where and when do we stop trying to mold the world to our specifications? How do we reconcile our national "mission" as defined in the universal values articulated by the Declaration of Independence with the practical necessity of adopting the strategic defensive when there is no countervailing power to force us to do so?

A soldier from an AFRICOM or a bridge builder from China? I guess it depends on what one wants to cross.

That's a spot on comment. I've been wondering myself for years why we aren't just trying to buy every government in Africa. Not for colonialism or any other reason but simply to keep the Chinese out. If the Chinese get too big a foothold in Africa which has a wealth of minerals/oil that will be a huge security threat to the U.S.

Anyone interested in Chinese activity in Africa and Chinese expansionism in general, should read H. John Poole's Terrorist Trail and, in particular, Dragon Days.

In his foreword to Dragon Days, MG Ray L. Smith USMC (Ret.) writes: "...Poole has discovered evidence of a PRC strategy that is only visible through easily ignored details. This strategy involves the destabilization of free nations to garner not only their natural resources, but also the shipping lanes back to China. Whether or not this hypothesis is adequately supported, Poole's solution to it has tremendous applicability to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever else U.S. troops may find themselves in future years."

I can't imagine the Chinese government deploying quasi-mercenary personnel except to protect their own people when they're over in Africa (and a lot of them are). As for the Africans, more likely the Chinese will just continue their strategy of throwing money around indiscriminately, regardless of morality and human rights records.