It's more than just good relation, its a --quite-- assistant to Ethiopia from Chinese government to export nation build expertise with a goal of creating a prosperous area that ultimately as an investor also can benefit from the development and growth by itself.

Contractors and private companies are just tip of iceberg. A lot of hi level government cooperations , government sponsored think tank activities[1] which might play a more important role than private business activities. Chinese are coaching Ethiopia to build a nation.

It's the same journey that China itself experienced for last 30 years. The nation building expertise partially comes from tons of competing local government policy makers fighting for the prosperity of their home cities on the vast experiment field of 1.3 billion people, but in early years of struggle also from Hongkong,Taiwan entrepreneurs and even a foreign government with their management expertise when China was as poor as many Africa countries and with no expertise. During the time (in 1996) I created the first web site for CS-SIP[2], I witnessed local Chinese government officials learned from Singapore coaches like pupils.

Why Ethiopia? Because although it's a democracy but the Ethiopian political ecosystem is closer to an "Orwellian regime" that makes building nation possible. It's totally not because Chinese particularly like a regime. Actually Chinese are ideology agnostic and pragmatic. Chinese have a better understanding that this kind of "oppressive" governance creates less chaos. For example Chinese construction contractors almost always hire Chinese worker from China. The real reason is those are the only qualified teams[3] be able to get the job done. However in a democratic countries some sponsored NGO and activists will speak out the "true" that Chinese companies have job discrimination against local people. Then there are massive protests by local people Th Projects can not continue. These incidents happened many times in non-regime countries.

Why quite? Isn't nation building expertise is more valuable and worth to promote than business building expertise so larger population can benefit from? There are a couple of reasons:

1.Western journalists are almost all belief driven people with a little different mindset of HN readers with proof driven thinking. Most of them are activists in the guise Journalist who want to promote their own ideology. They mentally deny the real cause of fast growth in Ethiopia because both governments are regimes so they unintentional hide the truth.

2.Chinese government don't want to be to visible so the nation building is less likely to be interrupted. The international community won't see Chinese effort as an mutual beneficial economic activity but as an expansion to gain regional influence like Soviet Union or Iran because international community is largely brain washed by Orwell's works like 1984 which used to be valid many years ago and still valuable but not applicable everywhere any more.

[1]I have a old friend did consulting job helping policy making for Ethiopia

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou_Industrial_Park

[3] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/968608879914270721?lang=...