China is doing what Europe did in the 19th century. Anti-colonial independence movements and wholesale nationalization of existing infrastructure put a hell of a clamp on that sort of investment after the second world war. Why would you put up money to build ports or railroads or factories when political instability could mean that next year a tinpot dictator might decide that he was taking it at bayonet-point and seizing all your in-country assets? Especially when your government had demonstrated time and again that they had no interest in retaliating for that kind of trespass.