China-Africa Relations in the Belt and Road Era | ...

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This inability to industrialise has had wide-ranging implications for the economic life of the African continent and its people. For example, real wages, which are often buttressed by industrial production, have declined and are lower today than they were in the 1970s. Additionally, over the last three decades the number of people living in poverty has declined in every region of the world except for Africa, where the opposite has taken place. In 1990, close to 300 million people lived in poverty in Africa. By 2020, that number had grown to 400 million and is likely to grow further in the current decade. Finally, the African continent is today more dependent on the rest of the world, especially the West, as a market for its primary commodities than at independence.

While industrialisation has eluded the African continent over the past six decades, during the same time period, China has registered unparalleled achievements in this regard. Ever since the reforms of the late 1970s, China has consistently grown its industrial base which, in turn, has led to one of the fastest reductions in poverty in human history. In 1981, about 90 percent of the Chinese population lived in poverty. By 2018, China’s poverty rate had declined to a mere third of a percent. Additionally, the country’s growth in industrial production has undergirded its rise as a serious economic and political player on the world stage with an unquestioned ability to determine its destiny.

Given China’s success at industrialisation and Africa’s struggles with it, there has curiously been a paucity of comparative scholarly work that seeks to draw out China’s lessons for Africa’s industrialisation. Even less has been work that considers whether China can be an effective ally in Africa’s hitherto elusive quest to industrialise.

It is this gap that the current issue of Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横) seeks to fill. The two essays in this issue are written by leading Chinese scholars of comparative economic development. The first essay, by Professor Zhou Jinyan (周瑾艳) of Shanghai International Studies University, is titled ‘Africa’s Path to Industrialisation: How Can China Contribute to the Continent’s Economic Development?’. As the title suggests, the essay seeks to describe and analyse Africa’s historical experience with industrialisation while considering the role that China can play in the continent’s quest to develop. The essay starts out by acknowledging the facts presented earlier, namely that Africa has had a disastrous record with industrialisation. Rather than place the blame at the feet of Africans, as many, especially Western scholars, are wont to do, Professor Zhou sees this history of lacklustre industrial performance as largely the result of the ‘failure of Western development prescriptions’. For instance, she writes emphatically that ‘Western aid has promoted economic dependence in Africa, while the political, economic, and ideological hegemony of the West has reduced Africa’s policy space and autonomy. From neoliberal structural adjustment programmes to reform strategies aimed at improving the business and investment environment, Western prescriptions have not assisted African economic development’. In line with some of my own work, Professor Zhou decries the total dominance of Western intellectuals and experts in the policy process in Africa.

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