Ecuador is planning to auction off three million of the country's 8.1 million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil companies, Jonathan Kaiman of The Guardian reports.
The report comes as oil pollution forced neighboring Peru to declare an environmental state of emergency in its northern Amazon rainforest.
Ecuador owed China more than $7 billion — more than a tenth of its GDP — as of last summer.

In 2009 China began loaning Ecuador billions of dollars in exchange for oil shipments. It also helped fund two of the country's biggest hydroelectric infrastructure projects, and China National Petroleum Corp may soon have a 30 percent stake in a $10 billion oil refinery in Ecuador.