Mr Hu's mission to Khartoum.

This article reports on China's growing clout in Africa. All over Africa a commodity-hungry China is winning friends by building roads, ports and railways. However, Hu Jintao, China's president, also shields Sudan from being held to account in the United Nations Security Council for one of the largest atrocities of recent times: the killing of some 300,000 people and the uprooting of more than 2m in Darfur.