A Common Prosperity
ISTOCK The default impression of China for many foreigners three or four decades ago was kungfu movies. However, things have changed and the country has transformed into a land of highspeed trains, skyscrapers, and a fast growing economy. As the Chinese people mark the 40th anniversary of the implementation of its groundbreaking reform and opening-up policy, there is a willingness to build a community with a shared future for humanity. The long-held policy has not only brought about China’s speedy and sustainable development, but also allowed China to have contributed greater momentum to the world economy. For that reason, China is referred to as the leading champion of development among emerging economies.
Global economic engine
Over the past four decades, China’s GDP has averaged a yearly growth rate of about 9.5 percent. In terms of foreign trade, China has registered a yearly growth of over 14.5 percent in the U.S. dollar. In the last 10 years, with China’s strength in the workforce, capital, market and technology, the nation, on average, contributed 30 percent of the global economic growth yearly, sharing the benefits of China’s development with the world. Also, the country’s share in the global economy rose from 2.7 to 16 percent; its per-capita GDP exceeded $8,800 in 2017; in the past 40 years, a total of 800 million Chinese are helped out of poverty – which amounts to over 70 percent of global poverty reduction (figures from related Chinese government agencies and the World Bank). China is the first developing nation to meet the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations in terms of poverty reduction. What had taken Western industrialized nations several centuries to accomplish has taken China four decades to accomplish.
Now, as the largest emerging economy, China is shifting from high-speed growth to high-quality growth. Data from the National Statistics Bureau of China show that the country has kept a medium-high economic growth rate of 6.9 percent in 2017 and 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2018, contributing to nearly one-third of global economic growth.
In doing so, China has promised to further open up its economy with concrete measures to promote a shared prosperity. During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference in April, he said that China will improve the investment environments for overseas investors, significantly lower the import tariffs for vehicles and lessen import tariffs for some other merchandises, adding that the Chinese people will continue to open and expand cooperation with the global economy by paying equal attention to “bringing in” and “going global.”
African connection
China’s four decades of reform and opening up meet its citizen’s aspiration for innovation, a better standard of living and development. In the innovation stakes, China moves to 17th place in innovation index measuring the innovation capability out of 40 major ranked countries, according to the National Innovation Index Report 2016-17 released by the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development.
Notably, an open China is in a better position to share the benefits of its reform and development with the world in general, and African economies in particular, so that China and the world can work together to attain a shared prosperity. Also, the reform resonates with the worldwide trend toward peace, cooperation and development. China has given new impetus to the world economy via a set of pragmatic programs, of which the most representative is the Belt and Road Initiative. The country’s impressive development trajectory offers an alternative development model for African economies where China’s presence has grown immensely over the years. That is why connecting China’s four decades of reform and opening up with the awakening of African economies is seen as the reason that China has contributed enormously in transforming the continent’s economic tale from “hopeless continent” to a “rising continent.”
According to the African Union’s Agenda 2063, building world-class infrastructure together with trade facilitation should see intra-African trade growing from less than 12 percent currently to about 50 percent by 2045, as well as Africa’s share of global trade soaring from 2 percent to 12 percent. To accomplish this, Africa needs to address the continent’s infrastructure gaps in order to completely attain Goal 9 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation) and Aspiration 2 of Agenda 2063 (An integrated continent, politically united, based on the ideals of Pan-Africanism and the vision of Africa’s Renaissance).
The Chinese Government has been accelerating and intensifying their efforts to make a substantial contribution toward the provision of hard infrastructure across Africa, ranging from distribution grids to pipelines, airports, ports, roads, refineries, railways and power generation, which is having a huge multiplier effect on African economies.
For example, Djibouti is the gateway to landlocked Ethiopia, one of Africa’s fastest growing economies. Already, over 90 percent of Ethiopia’s trade passes through Djibouti. Due to China’s substantial contribution toward the provision of hard infrastructure, the trade that once took three days by road has been cut to nearly 12 hours.
Beneficial cooperation model
China’s infrastructure development model has helped Africa’s growth - underpinning the “Africa rising” narrative that has emerged in recent years. During the past four decades, China’s large population has been the engine for its impressive growth rate. If African economies were to go through a similar economic miracle as China, African leaders need to sufficiently invest in the development of Africa’s greatest asset - its young population - because success without a successor is a failure.
There is a need to develop the workforce to compete in the global knowledge-based economy. However, China-Africa knowledge sharing cooperation can become a new way of bolstering a mutually beneficial cooperation model, speed up Africa’s industrialization and improve its independent development capacity, while bringing Chinese equipment, technologies and products to African nations through industrial capacity cooperation.
Global management consulting company Mckinsey & Co. estimated that there were more than 10,000 Chinese companies in Africa in 2017 that have created employment for numerous Africans. These companies have displayed remarkable prowess in sectors like infrastructure, agriculture, telecommunications, information communication technology, services, and manufacturing. This economic stimulus continues to have a significant economic impact in communities.
At the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in South Africa in December 2015, Xi ushered in a new era of win-win cooperation between China and Africa, a strategy formulated to create mutual prosperity. China has backed up this proposal with a fund of $60 billion for major capital projects, which are tied to developing local economic capacity. This is in the knowledge that for win-win cooperation to be sustainable, it is crucial to develop the local economy, by putting in place real knowledge transfers.
The leaps and bounds in China-Africa cooperation are clear evidence of the interdependence and mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Africa. So, as the Chinese people celebrate their four decades of reform and opening up, African leaders will want to remind the West of their appreciation of China’s snowballing significance as their leading development partner. African leaders will also like to remind the West that there is room for cooperation between Africa, China and the United States as well.
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