It’s quite a clever move really, and completely logical. Kenya tourism officials have asked the Chinese to help put the brakes on poaching.
In recent months the Chinese have shown a growing interest in East Africa’s wildlife. Central China Television (CCTV) (great acronym!) has been showing live coverage of the wildebeest migration from the Serengeti and Kenya sees the Chinese, with their growing appetite for foreign travel, as a lucrative future market for its wildlife tourism industry.
The thinking is that if Chinese tour operators see wildlife tourism as a potential boom area they will start taking their own steps to try and discourage people from killing the wildlife.