China's increasing financial and business engagement with Africa involves both rewards and perils. While many Chinese people's general impression of Africa revolves around poverty, famine, epidemic diseases and war, jet-setting entrepreneurs have found the continent to be a land of opportunity, with some saying it is as promising as China was when it opened its doors to the world in the 1980s.
As Chinese enterprises aggressively seek new markets for exports and the country searches for new sources of energy and raw materials to feed its explosive economic growth, its involvement in Africa is the subject of heated debate across Africa and in the wider international community.
'It is totally wrong to think that Africa is a backward place and suggest law and order are lacking or its people too poor to do business,' Xu Jinghu , the head of the Foreign Ministry's department of African affairs, told a recent news conference on this weekend's Forum on China-Africa Co-operation Summit in Beijing.
Li Haojie , chairman of Shenzhen Tian Rong Investment, a leading petroleum equipment manufacturing company with heavy involvement in Africa, said: 'The situation in Africa now is largely what it was like in China in the 1980s and 1990s, where an increasingly open market, the fast pace of growth and improved investment environment all represent a sea of new opportunities for foreign investors.'
Tian Rong is expanding its investment in the continent, which Mr Li sees as a market with great potential for his company's expansion and profit growth.
Chen Dawei , chairman of Shantou Jinlong Food Processing Machinery, said his company had only recently started exporting to Africa, but he was already optimistic about the market.