China's New BFF, East Timor

We've written here before about how China is throwing around huge sums of money in Africa in return for access to the resource wealth of a number of African nations. Now China is courting a new friend closer to home, the tiny nation of East Timor (or Timor Leste as it's known in Portuguese).

East Timor has a tumultuous recent history. The largely Roman Catholic former Portuguese colony finally won its independence from largely Muslim Indonesia after three decades of brutal occupation by the Indonesians. That occupation left between 100,000 and 200,000 Timorese dead and the country largely in ruins. So along with being one of the world's newest countries, East Timor is also one of its least developed.

But East Timor does have potentially huge oil and natural gas reserves, along with valuable mineral deposits, so in comes China. So far the Chinese government has spent more than $50 million on East Timor - a fraction, Reuters points out, of the $700 million in aid East Timor's main patron, Australia, has spent so far on the country - but China has spent its money in high-profile ways, building government buildings that include the new Presidential Palace, the Ministry of Defense and the Foreign Ministry headauarters. China is also investing in building two power plants in the capital, Dili. Chinese entrepreneurs are also heading to East Timor, opening stores in Dili and building on a cultural link between the two countries that dates back 500 years when Chinese sailors first set up a trading post in Dili.

In return, China is hoping that their state-run oil company, PetroChina, will be allowed to sign lucrative deals to drill in the potentially rich oil deposits off the coast of East Timor. Of course Chinese officials say that their foreign aid isn't meant to influence the Timorese government when the time comes to award the oil and gas contracts.