In an amazing geopolitical coup late last year, China's leaders invited most of the leaders of Africa to Beijing to discuss buying Sudanese oil and Zambian copper and Congolese timber and much more in return for building roads and airports and factories. They nearly all came.
While Europeans and North Americans tie their aid to anti-corruption drives and environmental audits, China asks few questions. And gets the deals.
By such means, China has, to take one example, risen in less than a decade to become the world's biggest importer of tropical timber - and the biggest exporter of wood products like furniture, plywood and wood flooring.
Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency have documented how corrupt and environmentally damaging this trade is. But here is the interesting bit. China still can't get enough timber, especially for the packaging it wraps round its manufactured goods as they depart round the world.
So it has also become the world's largest importer of waste paper. Most of what you and I put out for recycling hitches a ride in empty containers going back to China.
Most has already been bought by Zhang Yin, one of the richest self-made women in the world. She is founder of Nine Dragons, the world's largest paper recycler. She turns our waste into 5 million tonnes of new packaging a year, ready to return in the next container.
We are inclined to complain about our recycled paper taking the slow boat to China, but the fact is that it is saving thousands of trees from being cut down, from Siberia to New Guinea.
There is a long way to go, but China's hunger for resources has at least the potential to turn it into the first country in the world to power its industrial revolution with recycled materials.
So let's send more of our rubbish to China.
While Europeans and North Americans tie their aid to anti-corruption drives and environmental audits, China asks few questions. And gets the deals.
By such means, China has, to take one example, risen in less than a decade to become the world's biggest importer of tropical timber - and the biggest exporter of wood products like furniture, plywood and wood flooring.
Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency have documented how corrupt and environmentally damaging this trade is. But here is the interesting bit. China still can't get enough timber, especially for the packaging it wraps round its manufactured goods as they depart round the world.
So it has also become the world's largest importer of waste paper. Most of what you and I put out for recycling hitches a ride in empty containers going back to China.
Most has already been bought by Zhang Yin, one of the richest self-made women in the world. She is founder of Nine Dragons, the world's largest paper recycler. She turns our waste into 5 million tonnes of new packaging a year, ready to return in the next container.
We are inclined to complain about our recycled paper taking the slow boat to China, but the fact is that it is saving thousands of trees from being cut down, from Siberia to New Guinea.
There is a long way to go, but China's hunger for resources has at least the potential to turn it into the first country in the world to power its industrial revolution with recycled materials.
So let's send more of our rubbish to China.
