Excerpts from Francis Galton's letter to the editor of The Times, "Africa for the Chinese," dated June 5, 1873.
The Chinaman ... is endowed with a remarkable aptitude for a high material civilization. He is seen to the least advantage in his own country, where a temporary dark age still prevails, which has not sapped the genius of the race, though it has stunted the developed the of each member of it, by the rigid enforcement of an effete system of classical education which treats originality as a social crime. All the bad parts of his character, as his lying and servility, spring from timidity due to an education that has cowed him, and no treatment is better calculated to remedy that evil than location in a free settlement. ... [The Chinese] are good-tempered, frugal, industrious, saving, commercially inclined, and extraordinarily prolific. ...take a globe and examine it, and consider the huge but poorly-peopled bulk of Africa, by whose side the areas of India and of China look insignificant, and think what a field lies there for the development of a suitable race.
Gilbert Malcolm Sprout concludes his rejoinder to Galton's letter by writing:
Chinamen, for many generations, are likely to have quite enough to do in their own country without taking Africa in hand.
Brought to my attention by @BarbarianCap.
Along the Addis Ababa-Adama Expressway in Ethiopia.
Above is a screenshot from Google Earth ... you can see the housing for the imported Chinese labor. These temporary housing structures are familiar to anyone who has been to a Chinese city; they are used to house migrant workers ("民工").