{UAH} Why China-TZ ‘ties’ are the right way forward - Business Week - thecitizen.co.tz
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Why China-TZ 'ties' are the right way forward - Business Week
In Summary
That was when that country depended for its economic life to a considerable extent on exports of raw/unprocessed goods, and receipt of what's today facetiously known as 'Official Development Assistance' (ODA), generally obtained from foreign sources!
A world-renown China researcher and author, Tang Xiaoyang, claims that Africa in general and Tanzania in particular is today very much like what China was a mere 30 years ago!
That was when that country depended for its economic life to a considerable extent on exports of raw/unprocessed goods, and receipt of what's today facetiously known as 'Official Development Assistance' (ODA), generally obtained from foreign sources!
If testimony to this latter assertion were required, it'll be found in Masayuki Masuda's 'China Perspectives,' published in 2003. In that 'treatise,' Masuda stated that Japan lent China a total of $21.5bn between 1978 and 1999!
[Incidentally, by way of comparison, the World Bank did lend Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's Tanganyika/Tanzania about $16bn over the entire period of Mwalimu's presidency, 1962-85... But, that's really another story...]
The point here's that, in due course of time, determination and events, China is today the world's second largest economy, beaten in those stakes only by the US the self-styled 'Land of the Brave and Home of the Free!' [According to the US CIA World FactBook: US' GDP at the official exchange rate in 2013 was estimated at $16.72 trillion, while China's was $9.33tr].
For its part, Tanzania and, indeed, many other nation-states across the African continent are still basically exporters of unprocessed goods, and foreign donor-dependent!
Why is there such a great disparity in socio-economic terms between China and Africa despite 30 years of development opportunities which were available for the taking by the two parties? In other words: why has China virtually 'sprinted' from a middling economy to a global economic powerhouse?
What happened...? Or, perhaps more accurately: what hasn't happened?
In other words, why has China leapfrogged to the front in the global economic stakes - while the likes of Tanzania in Africa have for all practical purposes been marking time in the economic shallows? Why, indeed, is that the case on the ground?
But, perhaps things are about to change for the better for Africa and Tanzania. This is largely compliments of the ongoing economic and other benefits which are being engendered through the flourishing and thriving partnerships between China and Africa. These largely encompass industrial, infrastructural and other investments by the former in the potentially richly-endowed Africa!
It's today the view of analysts that the rapidly-developing China-Africa relations across the board are bound to eclipse the ties hitherto of many other nation-states including the traditional African ties to the West in general, and Africa's former colonial masters in particular!
Much of those traditional relations were more of an exploitative nature, rather than developmental on a win-win basis. The relationships basically entailed foreigners plundering raw materials and other 'wealth' from Africa, while Africa was reduced to a market and dumping ground for foreign manufactories!
Researcher Tang predicts in his latest book, 'China-Africa Economic Diplomacy – and What it Reveals about the Global Supply Chain,' that, 'if China continues to invest in expanding Africa's local manufacturing landscape, then - sooner than later - the products which today bear the legend 'Made in China' will be replaced by a 'Made in Africa' label!' What a flamboyantly flattering way of putting things!
Admittedly, Tang confines that technological transfer mostly to labour-intensive, cheap products for starters rather than high-tech, capital-intensive products. This is, of course, basically because much
of Africa, Tanzania not excepted, still doesn't have the requisite industrial infrastructure for high-tech production. But, no matter...What really matters here's the need to enhance in every way the
China-Tanzania relations which have already lasted an incident-free half-century. It is, of course, not all a one-way affair, with China investing in Tanzania, and helping in one form or another with the
construction of infrastructural projects.
China is also a promising market for Tanzania's horticultural produce, a burgeoning sub-sector whose exports earned more than $375m for Tanzania in 2014! But, that's also another story...Suffice it here to say that China-Tanzania relations are on the right track ― and that is the right way forward... Cheers!
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