#FOCAC: Africa has had 15 years to learn the lessons of China’s spectacular economic success through its association with Beijing in the Forum for China-Africa Co-operation (Focac), but has it?
Focac will hold its sixth, three-yearly, high-level meeting in Sandton this week. It will be the second at summit level and the first in Africa.
At first glance, Focac may seem to favour China, if only because China has been so much more successful than any African country. But in fact it has been an endeavour by the African side to counterbalance China’s success.
Before Focac, China had already begun a major drive into the continent in search of raw materials. The general pattern of the economic relationship was large exports from Africa of raw materials and large imports by them of Chinese manufactured goods.
So, one of the main aims of the Africans – particularly South Africa – in Focac has been to try to rebalance that unbalanced economic relationship, for instance, by encouraging Chinese investment in production that adds value to African raw materials.
There have been some successes in this effort, though not a lot. But China has promised to unveil more such projects at this summit.
Africa has also been partly successful in persuading China to direct more of its considerable infrastructure investments into cross-border infrastructure that supports the AU’s regional integration ambitions, rather than into national projects.
But apart from trying to shape China’s Africa policy, it should be keen to learn from a country that has experienced a 40-fold increase in its gross domestic product and lifted 500 million people out of poverty in just 35 years.
This is certainly the time to be learning because the commodity boom that boosted China’s import of African raw materials and the continent’s average growth rate this century to about 5 percent is ending.
How Africa should relate to the new Chinese model of domestic consumer-led growth, rather than highly industrialised, export-led growth, will be a hot topic at the summit.
Ultimately, Africa’s salvation lies in emulating China’s success. Luke Jordan, an analyst with Grassroot, gave a seminar at the South African Institute of International Affairs last week, and offered suggestions on how to do this.
Chinese culture has also been cited as a factor in the success story and this may have some bearing on what Jordan suggests is the main reason for Beijing’s economic miracle.
He noted that a detailed analysis of China’s policies and programmes revealed that many had only been partly successful or not successful at all at first. But then the Chinese government had changed or adapted them until they worked. “This suggests the primary cause of China’s development may not lie in any set of static policies, but in the dynamic process of state learning that continuously adjusts them.”
He described how China had institutionalised the process of learning from its mistakes, constantly monitoring the results of past policies through a network of national and provincial think tanks and government research units.
As an example, Jordan cites the special economic zones, (SEZs) which have often been credited with much of China’s success. He notes China has constantly adapted these to changing realities and allowed considerable leeway for local officials to implement policies that are appropriate to their SEZs.
He contrasts this flexible approach to both the SEZ policies of India and South Africa, both of which are far more rigid, less adaptable to local conditions and not integrated into the normal environment. As a result, Indian SEZs have mostly been abandoned.
The South African ones, he seems to be suggesting, could be heading the same way.
Jordan sees a similar pragmatism and adaptability in rural development and infrastructure build. So he suggests, rather wryly, that for Africans to try to import fixed Chinese policies to implement in Africa is as problematic as importing Chinese manufactured goods, rather than building their own productive capacities.
Instead he proposes Africa, through Focac and otherwise – should mount a comprehensive programme of studying in detail the ways in which pragmatic China has adapted its policies to the demands of changing reality.
The great irony of this is that China’s success has largely been attributed to top-down commandist approach. But it is the filtering up of the results of implementing its policies that has evidently been more critical.
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT