These days, South Africa is a difficult place to establish a new...

These days, South Africa is a difficult place to establish a new mine and TGM suffers from that (along with WWI and VR8 and no doubt others too).
The Chinese have been cultivating African countries for some time and are proving canny operators in taking minority stakes in ASX companies shortly prior to reaching production status and then moving to buy-out. They got Tietto particularly cheap because there was no competition, unlike Cardinal Resources in Ivory Coast?, which the Russians also bid for. The Chinese have money and backing from their Government and so can dig deep, if they have to.