CAIPHUS KGOSANA | What have we learnt from all our ‘fact finding’ jaunts to China?

Before Covid-19 grounded them, officials of the ANC and its alliance partners would undertake numerous trips to China on “fact finding missions”.

These junkets are normally funded by the Chinese Communist Party, or some agency connected to it, under the usual jargon of “fostering relations”, “forging partnerships” blah blah blah. Our own government also used to send officials to learn from their counterparts in Beijing.  

There is a lot that we should be learning not just from China, but from the success story of Asian nations in taking people out of poverty. While not all lessons are applicable to SA, the one recurring theme in the story of this region’s success is the capacity to implement chosen economic policies.

Sure, there are other factors at play, including visionary leadership, high levels of productivity, discipline and choice of policy in relation to strengths.

In the book The Asian Aspiration: Why and How Africa Should Emulate Asia, Greg Mills and Emily van der Merwe of the Brenthurst Foundation, in collaboration with former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo and ex-Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn, outline the lessons that Africa should derive from the economic miracle of Asia, especially China which lifted 800 million people out of poverty in the space of two decades. They note that 80,000 Africans visit China every year to study the country.

There is a lot that we should be learning not just from China, but from the success story of Asian nations in taking people out of poverty.

Kobus van der Wath, who runs the Beijing Axis — an advisory and trading operation — attributes the success of China to “having sound economic policy, a good and evolving plan to implement it, and discipline in doing so”.

Justin Lin, former World Bank chief economist, notes that over and above economic liberalisation, the Chinese model involves “significant and ongoing bureaucratic reforms to ensure efficiency and accountability.”

“This enabled continuous improvements in productivity, which were fuelled by entrepreneurship,” Lin told the authors.

Deng Xiaoping’s modernisation programme, after the destructive Cultural Revolution under Mao, has been nothing short of miraculous.  

Figures from the World Bank show that, per capita, income increased five-fold between 1990 and 2000, from $200 to $1,000. It has increased an unbelievable seven-fold since 2000, rising to $7,300 by 2018.

As China industrialised and modernised, per capita income in Sub-Saharan Africa has hovered under $2,000 for the past 60 years.

You can bet your top dollar that these delegations of Africans that go on annual study tours to China are packed with officials whose responsibilities for their governments include planning and implementation. This includes ANC people.  

If they were listening in those meetings with officials of the CCP or Chinese government representatives, what is it they took back to their countries?

President Cyril Ramaphosa can repeat the same promises year after year in successive State of the Nation Addresses, but without an elaborate implementation plan that sets measurable delivery targets, time frames and holds people accountable for success or failure, those words are just dry text.

Ramaphosa told the nation on Thursday that economic reforms would be implemented, that his government was tackling the energy crisis, ramping up manufacturing, investing in infrastructure, boosting trade and employment.  

The reality on the ground, however, is that the bureaucracy he leads is in terrible shape and is frankly incapable of implementation at that kind of scale.

As Lin emphasises in the book, China put in place “significant and ongoing bureaucratic reforms to ensure efficiency and accountability.” Is our president bold enough to take this leap?    

Ramaphosa and his ministers have been on state visits to China. What was he asking Xi Jinping during those bilaterals?

What of his own comrades that have been there on “fact finding missions”, or government officials we kept sending to Beijing; what reports did they bring back? Have they implemented any of the advice received?

But knowing our guys, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they skipped meetings to shop or party up a storm in Shanghai and those glitzy Chinese cities.