Should Africa Turn To China?
Article by Dominic Odipo

"We need to recruit some of our most intelligent young graduates, teach them the major Chinese languages including Mandarin and then send them to China to study this Chinese phenomenon and advise us on how to respond. Like Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, our leadership needs to focus on China right now or run the risk of being overwhelmed from so far way by an economic juggernaut that is already rolling over the whole world."

The epicentre of our world is shifting. It is shifting from the great cities of Europe and North America to the new cities now rising in the People’s Republic of China.

It is shifting from London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Chicago and Washington DC to Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Nanjing. Events are occurring in China of such great magnitude that they boggle the mind. Like never before in history, the future of the whole world is being wrought by this giant of a country today home to more than one fifth of the entire human race.

From this point of view it makes little sense for Chris Murungaru, the Transport and Communications minister, to weep about being banned from British soil. In the emerging realpolitik and interessenpolitik — the politics of power and material interest — Britain will soon be history. In another 50 years, even the United States may have become history compared to the Middle Kingdom, this continent of a country in which modern civilization first emerged more than 5,000 years ago.

In his pace-setting and mind-boggling book, "China Inc.", American commodities trader and commentator, Ted. C. Fishman, has captured the emerging power of China as vividly and powerfully as no one else has yet been able to. Published only this year, "China Inc." is a fascinating and a must read for anyone trying to understand the world we shall be living in in the rest of the 21st Century. Mr. Ali Mwakwere, our foreign minister, should decree that every Kenyan Foreign Service officer reads this book for it does not matter where in the world you live today, China is at your door-step and your window-sill.

But first, a word about Wal-Mart, the American retail giant which is now the world’s largest company. To the Kenyan mind, Wal-Mart’s size and pace of growth over the last few years is hard to grasp. Like China, Wal-Mart shocks with its mere size. It is bigger than ExxonMobile, General Electric and General Motors and its annual sales now exceed those of its major rivals Target, Sears, Kmart, JCPenney, Safeway and Kroger combined.

Its 2003 sales, at US$260 billion matched the gross domestic product (GDP) of Switzerland, which will soon fall behind. About 14 million people shop in Wal-Mart stores everyday and its workforce of 1.4 million is the world’s largest for a private company.

What is the secret of Wal-Mart’s dizzy success? It the answer were to be reduced to one word, that word would be China. According to Fishman, perhaps up to 85 per cent of all the merchandise sold by Wal-Mart today is made in China. And China produces these goods at such rock-bottom prices and in such volumes that no other country in the world can be able to complete with it. It Wal-Mart were a nation, it would be China’s fifth largest export market, ahead of both Germany and Britain. Here-in lies the power, or the menace, of China. It is producing virtually everything at such low prices, with such quality and is such volumes that virtually no country in the world can compete with it. And it has so many people qualified and willing to work at such low rates that its competitive edge could last forever.

The country is home to about 1.5 billion people, about 1/5 of the entire human race. It has more people than the whole of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Mexic and the whole of Central America combined. This makes it not only the world’s largest single market but also the world’s largest source of cheap labour. China has already become the world’s largest maker of consumer electronics and today pumps out most TVs, DVD players and mobile phones than any other country.

As Fishman puts it in "China Inc.": "China is ascending even higher still, moving quickly and expertly into biotech and computer manufacturing. No country has ever before made a better run at climbing every step of economic development all at once. No country plays the world economic game better than China. No other country shocks the global economic hierarchy like China."

Fishman continues: "Even a casual glimpse at the news tells us that something large is looming in China. The nation is making parts of Boeing 757s and exploring space with its own domestically built rockets. China has between 100 and 160 cities with populations of 1 million or more (America, by contrast, has 9, while Eastern and Western Europe combined have 36).

"China is buying oil fields internationally and also signing exclusive oil and gas supply deals with Saudi and Russian companies. China is buying the world’s scrap metal, as well as enormous amounts of steel, to fashion into products sold globally."

There are many other startling facts about China. Shanghai, its largest city and now also the biggest in the world, is building highways in the sky which are now the most advanced in the world. The Chinese economy has been growing at roughly 8 per cent per year for the last ten years, about three times the average growth rate of the American economy over the same period. This means that, given its vast potential, it is only a matter of time before China becomes the world’s biggest economy.

China currently consumes about 40 per cent of the world’s cement and 25 per cent of its steel. China’s economy has become so dangerously competitive that within only 20 years it could be able to manufacture everything at rock- bottom prices and thus make or break the economies of every nation on earth.

For Kenya, the implications of all this must be very clear. We need to shift our strategic focus from London, Paris and Washington to Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.

We need to recruit some of our most intelligent young graduates, teach them the major Chinese languages including Mandarin and then send them to China to study this Chinese phenomenon and advise us on how to respond. Like Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, our leadership needs to focus on China right now or run the risk of being overwhelmed from so far way by an economic juggernaut that is already rolling over the whole world.

The writer is a freelance journalist and consultant based in Nairobi
Source: http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=26955

References

1. Will China Overtake the U.S.? Posner Comment
2. China and the world economy - From T-shirts to T-bonds
3. Why Is China Growing So Fast?: Click Here

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