Chinese and Guinean laborers toil shoulder-to-shoulder on a searing-hot construction site at this decaying city’s edge, building the most recent symbol of an old and staunch alliance: a $50 million, 50,000-seat stadium.

According to the New York Times, “this city is littered with such tokens of a friendship that first flowered when Guinea was an isolated and struggling socialist state in the late 1950s.”

Yet thus far, Guinea has not received what it really desires from the world’s fastest-growing economy: a multibillion-dollar deal to build urgently needed infrastructure in exchange for access to the impoverished country’s vast reserves of bauxite and iron ore.

As world-wide commodity prices have plummeted and several of China’s African partners have plunged deeper into chaos, China has stepped away from some of its riskiest and most aggressive business plans, searching for the same guarantees which Western corporations have long sought for their investments: political and economic stability.

Huo Zhengde, the Chinese ambassador to Guinea, is quoted in an interview as saying, “the political situation is not very stable.” He described the nation’s reluctance to invest billions in Guinea, where a military-style junta seized power in December after the death of the long-serving president. He added, “the international markets are not favorable.”

As reported by the NY Times, “just a year ago China appeared to be up-ending the decades-old order in Africa, stepping into the void left by large Western companies to timid to invest in the continent’s resource-rich but fragile states as the markets for copper, tin, oil and timber soared to new heights. In the new scramble for Africa’s riches, China sought a hefty share.”

China seemed to provide a complete economic and political alternative with a no-strings-attached approach and a strong stamina for risk, as opposed to the heavily-conditioned assistance and economic restructuring that Western nations and international aid agencies pressed on Africa for years, frequently with uninspiring consequences. A rising China seeking alliances and resources appeared to be issuing blank checks.

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