The next morning, the inspection group boarded a pale yellow Toyota Coaster minibus bound for Manzini.

Deng Shiyang wore headphones, lazily leaning his shoulder against the window. He rested his left hand on his cheek while occasionally fiddling with the iPod Shuffle clipped to his lapel, capturing images of the checkpoints they passed.

In the mesh pocket on the back of the seat in front of him was a brochure the size of a magazine, containing promotional materials from the Swaziland Ministry of Economic Development.

This brochure had been a "souvenir" from the previous night's welcome banquet, and its quality could only be described as "shoddy." The text was rife with poor wording and spelling errors on nearly every page. The accompanying images were even worse, with obvious Photoshop edits apparent even to someone like Deng Shiyang, who knew little about image editing software.

As for last night's banquet, the memory still brought a smile to Deng Shiyang's face.

The event was hosted by Major General Revende Ashalon Dunier, the Minister of Economic Development. He was a plump Black man with a round face, squinty eyes, a flat nose, thick lips, and a double chin, looking comically like a cartoon character.

Before the banquet began, the minister gave a toast. Since he didn't speak English, and there was no interpreter who spoke both Swazi and Chinese present, the speech had to be translated from Swazi to English by one interpreter, then from English to Chinese by another. This made the already lengthy toast even more cumbersome.

Based on the minister's performance, it was clear that even if he wasn't illiterate, he was not much better than a semi-literate person. Though he was reading from a script, he repeatedly stumbled over his words, often interrupting himself to correct mistakes, leaving the two interpreters quite embarrassed.

At 10:15 in the morning, the Coaster minibus turned onto Highway 3 near Matsapha, entering the outskirts of Manzini.

Manzini looked much like it did in the satellite images on Google Earth. The city was built on a vast hilly area, with the urban center located on a flat plateau where government offices and upscale residences were concentrated. The industrial zone lay in the southwestern corner, consisting of large blue-roofed, white-walled factory buildings. Beyond the city limits, the rolling hills stretched out, with terraced fields on the southeastern slopes and makeshift slums scattered across other areas.

To enter the city center, one had to pass through a series of checkpoints. The district, sealed off with barbed wire and concrete barricades, resembled a separate town, with a starkly different appearance from the suburbs. The roadsides were lined with lush trees, and the houses were two-story villas with private gardens. Occasionally, luxurious mansions with tennis courts and swimming pools could be seen. Even after passing just one intersection, there were already more cars than seen the previous day.

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The Coaster left Highway 3, taking a side road onto Ngwane Street, and continued until reaching the junction with Dudu Street, where it finally stopped in front of the Tums George Hotel, the only hotel in Manzini. Two staff members from the "China-Swaziland Trade and Economic Cooperation Office" under the Ministry of Commerce greeted the group and led them to a spacious conference room.

The content of the meeting was nothing new—it was all about vigorously promoting the Swaziland government's incentives for foreign investment and boasting about the country's investment environment, as if they were not merely seeking investments but trying to ensure the visiting companies would make a fortune.

Deng Shiyang was unimpressed by these statements. While still in Hong Kong, he had already learned about Swaziland's economic situation from the information provided by Harrowby.

Before the coup, Swaziland had diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan), which had made numerous investments in the country. In Manzini alone, there were more than a dozen Taiwanese factories engaged in textiles, garment production, and small electronics manufacturing.

After the coup, the new government became hostile toward the West, and Ndofa pushed for diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, making it impossible to maintain ties with Taiwan. Without diplomatic protection, many Taiwanese businessmen, fearing their assets would be "nationalized," withdrew en masse, resulting in a significant loss of capital and technical personnel. Combined with Swaziland's current political instability, the country's industrial system had effectively collapsed.

To address the increasingly severe economic and employment problems, the new government actively sought to develop trade and economic cooperation with China, hoping to bring in funds and technology to restore factory operations. However, they only intended to offer revenue sharing in exchange and had no plans to grant management or operational rights. In short, the Chinese side would not only provide funds and technology but also bear most of the risks.

Deng Shiyang realized from the day he set out that most members of the inspection group represented Chinese state-owned enterprises. After witnessing the situation in Swaziland over the past two days, he began to suspect that the investment was just a cover, and in reality, it was a way for the Chinese government to disguise its financial aid to Swaziland.

The meeting lasted until noon. The group had lunch in a restaurant where the tablecloths were still damp, and afterward, they visited a state-owned garment factory in the company of local officials from Manzini.

The factory compound consisted of four workshops and a warehouse, making it relatively large by Manzini's standards. One workshop was operational, while the doors of the other three were shut tight. Deng Shiyang glanced at the rooftops of the buildings and noticed that none of the passive ventilators were running.

Inside the workshop was a sewing room where a group of young girls, around fifteen or sixteen years old, dressed in white uniforms, sat at sewing machines, stitching a batch of white T-shirts with red lettering.

The tour continued until 4 p.m. When the group was leaving Manzini, the local officials presented each member with a white T-shirt bearing the slogan "I Love General Endofa" printed on the front. This was a product from the garment factory, intended as a gift for the public on the president's birthday two months later.