section_path: Economy/Chinese investment and trade
section_name: Chinese investment and trade
paragraph_text: Chinese investment and trade
  
  Published comments on Kenya's Capital FM website by Liu Guangyuan, China's ambassador to Kenya, at the time of President Kenyatta's 2013 trip to Beijing, said, "Chinese investment in Kenya... reached $474 million, representing Kenya's largest source of foreign direct investment, and... bilateral trade... reached $2.84 billion" in 2012. Kenyatta was "ccompanied by 60 Kenyan business people... gain support from China for a planned $2.5 billion railway from the southern Kenyan port of Mombasa to neighbouring Uganda, as well as a nearly $1.8 billion dam", according to a statement from the president's office, also at the time of the trip.
  
  Base Titanium, a subsidiary of Base resources of Australia, shipped its first major consignment of minerals to China. About 25,000 tonnes of ilmenite was flagged off the Kenyan coastal town of Kilifi. The first shipment was expected to earn Kenya about KSh.15 – 20 billion/= in earnings. In 2014, the Chinese contracted railway project from Nairobi to Mombasa was suspended due to a dispute over compensation for land acquisition.