OPINION| Africa can can capitalise on China’s ascendancy - China’s economic rise and growing footprint presents an alternative to the West
The first of October 2022 marked 73 years since Mao Zedong stood at Tiananmen Square and proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The event came at great cost – the communist victory that Mao and comrades accomplished was riddled with millions of casualties, warlord anarchy, fleeting and failed attempts at synergy with the nationalist or Kuomintang leadership of Chiang Kai-Shek, Japanese occupation and World War II.
At its founding in 1949, China was a Third World backwater with a per capita income of about $23. The“Sick Man of Asia”, which was hurled at the Qing Dynasty for losing the Sino-Japanese war came to symbolise China’s seemingly congenitally bad governance.
This status quo benefited the main Cold War belligerents. However, the United States was aware of China’s instrumental value in undercutting Soviet influence. Getting China in America’s camp of allies offered economic promise by unlocking the world’s largest market for American goods but was also crucial in stripping the Soviet Union of crucial allies.
Deng was a communist but of a more pragmatic mould. During Mao’s overreaching stay at the summit, Deng could not suggest, let alone press forcefully for, China to open up to the rest of the world economically. When he had the chance, starting from 1978, he led China to one of the most stunning economic successes in history. China’s economic growth was averaging around 9%, about three times that of America.
America has been accustomed to being at the pinnacle of the global pecking order and is understandably loath to cede this comfort to an erstwhile Third World country. America’s missionary and universalist way of thinking creates the premise on which its hostility to China’s rise rests. It believes that American values should be the global norm and hence, with missionary zeal, wants to convert the rest of the world.
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