In reply to drunken monkey:
China has no interest in ‘sorting out’ any mess, it is only interested in securing its long term mineral and energy supplies, something it has done exceptionally well across the rest of the continent. In return for Chinese help and assistance in building capital infrastructure projects it gets huge concessions on the mineral ores and crude it needs to fuel its rapidly expanding middle class. Unlike the west, china does not bang on about human rights issues, transparency of government or make loans and investments conditional on improving said issues which is why African leaders in places like Angola, Cameroon, Congo, Nigeria, Gabon and Kenya increasingly tell Europe/USA to piss off and turn to Beijing. South Sudan is landlocked, chronically unstable with an aging and decrepit oil industry that needs billions spent to modernise it, and that’s before you look at the cost of building new pipelines to the Red Sea and negotiating and transit rights with neighbouring countries. Why would they dick around with that when the big men in Luanda are happy to sign over their vast resources for peanuts.
