China has over the past decade paid for dams, power stations, football stadiums across Africa and scooped up copper, oil and other fuel for its breakneck economic expansion from Algeria to Zimbabwe.

It has invested billions of dollars while raising eyebrows in the United States and its allies by pursuing the hunt for oil and other resources in Sudan, Somalia and other nations that the West has shunned.

Many African leaders praise China however for not preaching about rights and corruption. So despite neo-colonialist qualms, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao can expect a warm welcome from Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and finance and foreign ministers from 50 countries when the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation starts in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh on Sunday.

FOCAC is held every three years and this will be the fourth since it started in 2000.

Ever-eager for raw materials and markets to sell its products, China has said the new meeting will lay down a "road map" to further boost cooperation between 2010 and 2012.

Direct Chinese investment in Africa leapt from 491 million dollars in 2003 to 7.8 billion dollars in 2008. Trade between the two has increased tenfold since the start of the decade.

Last year, China-Africa trade reached 106.8 billion dollars -- a rise of 45 percent in one year and on a par with with the United States, which estimated its two-way trade with sub-Saharan Africa at 104 billion dollars for 2008.

Chinese imports from Africa last year were worth 56 billion dollars, dominated by oil (39 billion dollars) and raw materials.

Its 56 billion dollars of exports in 2008 consisted mainly of machinery, electrical goods, cars, motorbikes and bicycles.

Some in the West have accuse China of worsening repression and human rights abuses in Africa by supporting countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe.

US intelligence director Dennis Blair told a Congress committee in March that US agencies are keeping close tabs on China's expanding influence in Africa, especially in oil-producing countries like Nigeria.

China ploughed seven billion dollars into Guinea's mining sector just days after the massacre by the army in September of 150 opposition supporters in the capital Conakry.

But China is seen as a key to ending the six-year war between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels because it is a firm ally of the Khartoum administration, a weapons supplier and importer of its oil.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has defended China's action in Africa, while slamming Western nations and firms for polluting the continent.

"The Chinese bring what Africa needs: investment and money for governments and companies. China is investing in infrastructure and building roads," Kagame told German daily Handelsblatt in an interview published in October.

In contrast, the West's involvement "has not brought Africa forward," the president was quoted as saying.

"Western firms have to a large extent polluted Africa and they are still doing it. Think of the dumping of nuclear waste in the Ivory Coast or the fact that Somalia is being used as a rubbish bin by European firms," he said.

Others have also said the closer ties focus on industries that boost African development, such as agriculture, electric power, transport and water drainage.

"China is the biggest developing country while Africa has the largest number of developing countries," China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told the Xinhua news agency ahead of the summit.

"With similar historical experiences, same tasks of developing and common interests, the two sides have always been supporting each other and forged a friendship of brotherhood."

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