Bob Woodruff hosts "China Inside Out,"

Bob Woodruff hosts "China Inside Out," a "Primetime" (10 p.m., ABC) special about the growing influence of the world's most populous country and dynamic economy.Woodruff, who began his career as a journalist translating for American news organizations in Beijing, travels all over the world to document China's expanding influence. As the title states, this is "China Inside Out." Most of the report takes place outside of that country.

Woodruff begins in Angola, where China has invested billions in roads, schools and bridges in exchange for a foothold in that nation's vast oil reserves. As Chinese diplomats observe delicately, Western nations, particularly Britain and the United States, have been pumping oil in Angola for decades, but they have not done much to help the people. Woodruff counters that China's influence in Africa often means making deals with corrupt elites, as they have in Sudan, home to the Darfur genocide.

Speaking fluent Mandarin, Woodruff meets with Chinese investors in Brazil, where Chinese demand for soybeans and other crops have made that South American nation a growing agricultural superpower. As one Chinese official observes: "We have 1.3 billion people to feed. Three times a day."The amount of resources required to fuel China's growing economy and ever-expanding affluence is staggering and worrisome to those trying to protect Brazil's rain forest from rapid destruction. It has been said that if the Chinese were ever to consume at the same rate as Americans, they would require a whole new planet to sustain them.