The World of China Inc.

But new classrooms and small ownership stakes don't fully solve the land-compensation issue or another major point of contention: the fact that so many Chinese have descended on P.N.G. — many illegally. Last November, in a low point for Sino-P.N.G. diplomacy, the police raided the construction sites at Basamuk and Ramu and arrested 223 Chinese for immigration violations. The foreign workers, it turned out, had entered on visas that prohibited employment. Ramu NiCo, in turn, complained that government bureaucracy was so slow that getting the proper paperwork would have taken years so they were forced to circumvent the rules. But there were other infractions. Local regulations specify that foreigners can only work in jobs that locals cannot perform and that they must be able to speak either English or pidgin. Most of the Chinese workers couldn't speak a word of either language.

Still, the P.N.G. government didn't want to risk derailing such a major investment. A compromise was reached, part of which required the Chinese working at the mine to attend English-language classes. Yet not a single Chinese I spoke to at Ramu or Basamuk said they had ever attended any of these language courses. Furthermore, despite assurances that the Chinese working on-site were only engineers or other specialists, I saw Chinese sweeping up construction debris and doing other menial labor that locals could surely do. (See pictures of the making of modern China.)

Discrepancies between national immigration policy and local reality are acknowledged even by P.N.G.'s Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Assistant secretary Nadile bluntly tells me she suspects that most Chinese who entered the country have done so without the necessary visas and work permits. Today, in major cities across P.N.G., the vast majority of so-called kai bars, or fast-food restaurants, are run by recent Chinese immigrants, as are nearly all the grocery stores. But few Chinese have the correct papers to run such businesses. I ask Nadile if she can tell me of a place nearby that she suspects is being run illegally. She takes me to an office window overlooking Port Moresby and points at two low-slung kai bars located within a minute's walk from the government office: the Rickshaw and the Noodle Shop.

Later I visit the Rickshaw and meet its affable owner Liu Lianghua. The tale he tells is like a caricature of the Chinese immigrant story. His in-laws moved to P.N.G. over a decade ago because they had some family who had settled there previously. Liu eventually followed with his family. Several other relatives joined them after that. More than a dozen members of Liu's family now live in P.N.G. The downtown building in which the Rickshaw is located also has a clothing shop, a variety store, a gaming bar and another eatery, all run by Chinese. When I ask about visas, he laughs and says immigration issues are not a problem in Papua New Guinea. "The locals don't know how to do trade, and the government knows that," says Liu. "If locals get money, they spend it immediately on liquor. The Chinese don't come here to enjoy life. We only come to make money."

Strange Bedfellows
In Papua New Guinea, at least, normal citizens can express their reservations about Chinese investment. But in many of the countries where China has made its biggest business forays, such democratic dissent is squelched by repressive governments that are taking the lion's share of any investment profits. Still, tensions can bubble up in surprising ways. In July, an al-Qaeda wing in North Africa vowed to target Chinese immigrants living there as revenge for the recent ethnic strife in China's largely Muslim Xinjiang region. The next month, riots against Chinese traders broke out in the Algerian capital Algiers, where residents accused the foreigners of failing to respect Islam. Last year, nine Chinese oil workers living near the Darfur area of Sudan were kidnapped by an unknown group. Five were later killed. An international trade embargo because of the unfolding genocide in Darfur may have kept most other foreign investors out of Sudan, but China consumes more than 60% of Sudanese oil. For a government keen on keeping economics and politics separate, Beijing is finding that the two have a nasty habit of intertwining. China is also learning that it can't keep a lid on political scandals overseas as easily as it can clamp down on information back home. In P.N.G., for instance, the local press has widely covered a government investigation into claims that corrupt local officials allowed Chinese immigrants to buy passports. In May Prime Minister Somare went so far as to implicate the immigration department, commenting, "We know some are saying, 'You give me a six-pack [of beer], and I'll give you a passport.'"

An even more sensitive case turned up in July. Namibian prosecutors are charging representatives connected to a Chinese state-owned manufacturer of security scanners with bribing local officials to win a $55 million contract in 2008. Until last year, the head of the company, Nuctech, was none other than Hu Haifeng, the son of China's President Hu Jintao. Although the younger Hu has not been publicly implicated in the case, Chinese censors quickly squelched news stories on the bust within China. (Separately, E.U. officials are also investigating whether Nuctech engaged in illegal activity in Europe.)

Still, for all the controversy surrounding the influx of Chinese money in Africa, Latin America and Asia, the truth is that the vast majority of Chinese working abroad aren't going to go home rich. Driving up to the Ramu mine site, I stopped the car at an incongruous sight: against a backdrop of rain forest, a lone Chinese man perched on a piece of cardboard overseeing a crew of local workers struggling in the sun to sheath a pipeline with insulation tape. There was a feudal tinge to the scene, but the life of Chen Ming, the Sichuan-born supervisor, is hardly idyllic. He has been in P.N.G. for 18 months, working seven days a week, though he sees little point in holidays "because there's nothing to do here." By the time he finishes paying hefty deductions for his room and board, he makes less than he would at an equivalent job back home. But unemployment is rising in China, and Chen struggled for months to find alternative work back home. "It's not a good job, but what else can I do?" he asks, fanning himself with the strip of cardboard. "I have to eat and send money home." For Chen and the other workers — Chinese as well as Papua New Guinean — toiling deep in the bush, all they can ask for is survival. But the big Chinese firms, and the local governments they support — they expect nothing less than the kind of fortunes that will reshape the world.

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