The first book to examine the unprecedented growth of China's economic investment in the developing world, its impact at the local level, and a rare hands-on picture of the role of ordinary Chinese in the juggernaut that is China, Inc.Beijing-based journalists Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Arajo crisscrossed the globe from 2009-2011 to investigate how the Chinese are literally making the developing world in their own image. What they discovered is a human story, an economic story, and a political story, one that is changing the course of history and that has never been explored, or reported, in depth and on the ground. The ';silent army' to which the authors refer is made up of the many ordinary Chinese citizens working around the world - in the oil industry in Kazakhstan, mining minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, building dams in Ecuador, selling hijabs in Cairo - who are contributing to China's global dominance while also leaving their mark in less salutary ways. With original and fresh reporting as well as top-notch writing, China's Silent Army takes full advantage of the Spanish-speaking authors' outsider experience to reveal China's influence abroad in all its most vital implications - for foreign policy, trade, private business, and the environment.