Chinese media kept a close watch on the violence in Kenya following the December 27 elections that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people and the displacement of at least 250,000. China has substantial investments in the east African nation, including telecommunications projects, infrastructure construction, and oil prospecting by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). China is also helping the Kenyan armed forces modernize. Military exchanges between the two countries began in 1996, and April 1997 saw the delivery of the first batch of Chinese made Y-12 aircraft to the Kenyan air force. During his visit to Nairobi this past November, Chinese defense minister Cao Gangchuan pledged to president Kibaki that Beijing would continue to support the country’s military modernization. Bilateral trade between the two countries hit a record high of $646 million in 2006. This represented a 36.1 percent increase over the previous year. In December 2007, amid the global “Made in China” recall scare, Xinhua ran this report by its Nairobi correspondent. The story discusses the fact that cheap Chinese consumer goods have been extremely beneficial to the Kenyan people, nearly half of whom live below the poverty line. It was against this backdrop that on January 3 Xinhua and People’s Daily both ran the exact same opinion piece discussing the turmoil that has ravaged Kenya. Initially published in Guangzhou Daily, the official newspaper of the Guangzhou municipal party committee, the article characterized protests by Kenya’s opposition “Orange Democratic Movement” (ODM) over alleged vote-rigging as “street-corner politicking”: