China’s intensive engagement in Africa has resulted in a rising number of state-owned corporations and private businesses undertaking various projects in male-dominated sectors such as agriculture, mining, and infrastructure construction. In Madagascar, among the “new” Mandarin-speaking Chinese immigrants, men disproportionally outnumber women. Based on 12-months of fieldwork among workers at a Chinese-managed factory compound and among Chinese businesses in a major city in Madagascar, this paper discusses the moral dilemmas faced by these men after developing intimate relationships with local Malagasy women – relationships that are usually understood as transactional even though they might last several years and/or end up with children. Though many of these Chinese immigrants have wives in China to whom they profess loyalty, their masculinity is constantly challenged if they stay celibate for a long time. In addressing this topic, I focus especially on how male Chinese immigrants form fraternal bonds with one another and create a moral standard that transcends the binaries of good and bad, loyal and promiscuous. I also focus on the agency of Malagasy women in relationships with men who seem to enjoy greater power due to their mobility, relative wealth, and higher social status as “foreigners”, and on the agency of Chinese women in long-distance relationships with their husbands working in Madagascar.