China's a Lion. Is the United States a Gazelle?

What a week in the Serengeti taught me about America's role in the world.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Friday, July 1, 2011, at 12:41 PM ET

The cheetah lunged and clamped its jaws around the neck of a fleeing gazelle—the quick resolution of a 15-second chase at 50 miles per hour—and bought the limp victim back to her six cubs for lunch. Watching from 30 feet away, I was reminded of the brutality of the law of the jungle, and the fact that nature doesn't leave much room for second place. Despite the Serengeti's Garden of Eden quality, there is a clear and brutal hierarchy that dictates survival. Within a pride of lions or a herd of elephants, new leaders are chosen on a regular basis. Predictable measures of strength determine who rules: speed, power, ability to provide food, even popularity.

And so what does this have to do with geopolitics, you ask?

In conversations with an array of folks in Kenya and Tanzania, a major concern was China's increasing role in funding, buying, developing, building, and usurping. Who was funding the infrastructure project in downtown Nairobi? China. Who was entering long-term contracts to buy natural resources throughout Kenya and Tanzania? China. Who was funding the luxury resort on the coast of Zanzibar? China. The Chinese were ubiquitous—or, at least, their money was.