Word: africa
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...provide the same features of the U.S. travel website - which offers package tours, hotel reservations, plane tickets, rental-car reservations and cruises, among other services - was a reckless, if not impossible, task. Instead, it focused on mastering one service before adding another. (See pictures of Chinese investment in Africa...
...China for about three centuries, is that of a court attendant holding a rope around a giraffe. An inscription on the side says the animal dwelled near "the corners of the western sea, in the stagnant waters of a great morass." According to legend, the giraffe was found in Africa, along with zebras and ostriches, and brought back with the grand 15th century expeditions of Zheng He, China's greatest mariner...
...country marked the 600th anniversary of the seven voyages from 1405 to 1433 undertaken by Zheng's vast "treasure fleets" with nationwide celebrations; the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing dramatized his explorations from Southeast Asia to the Middle East and the shores of Africa. On Feb. 26, China's Ministry of Commerce announced it was funding a three-year project with the assistance of the Kenyan government to search for Ming-era vessels that had supposedly foundered off the East African coast. "Historical records indicate Chinese merchant ships sank in the seas around Kenya," Zhang...
...West's roles in the world. Though the unprecedented display of maritime power was meant to extend the Ming dynasty's reach over a network of tributary states, Zheng rarely resorted to the type of violent, coercive measures taken for centuries by European colonizers, especially in Africa. "Zheng's a nominal symbol of China's peaceful engagement with the world," says Geoffrey Wade, a historian at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore who has translated Ming records pertaining to the voyages. "With him, it's like the Chinese have an ambassador of friendship - a sign that they aren...
...recent years, though, Beijing has come under criticism for an approach to Africa that is perhaps more bloodless than it is cuddly. China's support of autocratic regimes, from Zimbabwe to Sudan - where Beijing effectively built up an oil industry from scratch - has exposed the Asian giant to accusations of turning a blind eye to human-rights abuses as it goes about securing natural resources and political influence. China has pumped billions of dollars into infrastructure projects throughout the continent, tying up key contracts in resource-rich states like Angola and the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo...