When the jetliner carrying Premier Li Keqiang and his Chinese delegation arrived in Luanda, capital of Angola, Li did not head straight to the hotel, nor did he join an official group meeting with state leaders.

Passing through crowded, slum-ridden areas of the capital, Li's first stop on his two-day visit to the oil-rich country was a symposium on living conditions of overseas Chinese.

Shop signs in Chinese characters flashed by on the way to the venue. In fact, Angola has the largest Chinese population on the continent - about 260,000 people, or more than one-fourth of all the Chinese in Africa.