by Gonzague Muganwa
Journalist and Associate Editor of Rwanda Dispatch, Rwanda
Growing up, as a young boy in the early 1990s, China was portrayed as the Kung Fu martial arts country popularised by the movies of Jet Lee, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Even where we grew up in rural East African villages and schools, acrobats who would come to perform claimed to be Marxists having trained in China. Therefore China was seen as a mystical world with a population capable of anything, full of magicians and monks from Shaolin temples. It was evident that the Chinese civilization was long in history and impressive.
As I we grew up and advanced in school, more awareness of China especially the revolution led by Chairman Mao, the Great March and the founding of the People’s Republic of China were taught to us and we read in many books about it. The most encouraging part is that communist- led China played a significant part in supporting African anti-colonial movements from the 1950s onwards. China, rooted in strong anti-imperialism, supported leaders like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania who anchored many struggles for independence in southern Africa. Further we came across literature showing that China was helping with construction of big infrastructure projects among which was the railway connecting the port of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Zambia known are the Tazara railway.
First forward, China interacted more with us in Africa after its economic take off and started producing a lot of consumer goods affordable to many Africans. With time, China replaced Japan and German as the source of electronics and other gadgets essential for a modern life yet at affordable prices. Since the 2000s, Chinese construction firms have been present in East Africa involved in especially big road projects. This means meeting and interacting with Chinese people in person.
Visit to China
When I first got an opportunity to visit the People’s Republic of China, in the summer of 2016, it was one of the most impactful and awakening moments in my life. I was aware of China’s spectacular development in previous decades but was not prepared for what I saw. At arrival at Beijing International Airport, the sheer size of the facility was astounding and the amount passengers and aircraft was nothing like i had seen before despite having been to big airports across Africa and Europe. The infrastructure advancements across Beijing, and other cities like Wuhan, Yichang were equally impressive. The tour took us to various historical excavation sites, and the Three Gorges dam- itself an engineering wonder. One of the highlights of the visit was climbing the Great Wall of China, north of Beijing. Itself not a small fit of exercise, seeing the Great Wall and climbing to the top, meeting tourists from all over the world and listening to the history of this great wonder of the world was memorable. Up to now I keep a medal and photos of the climb.
While the Great Wall represented the historic civilization of China, to me, the biggest signature of China’s modern advancement was the speed trains. We had an opportunity to travel from Beijing to another city in a bullet train, an experience I had not encountered before. Not only are speed trains fast, they are super comfortable with amenities including a bar counter making intercity travel marvelous. We learnt that China boosts the biggest percentage of speed trains in the world. With ease of travel, Chinese cities are growing fast and new ones are emerging- with urban planning experiments. We were showcased several city master-plans, evidence was everywhere that the plans were actually followed through.
Political system
During the 2016 visit, which included journalists from several African countries, we were given lectures on many subjects but one memorable one was on the Chinese political system. While it is widely known that China is governed by Communist Party of China (CPC), I had no knowledge of the existence of other political parties officially allowed to operate in the country. To my surprise we were introduced to the different political parties and explained the representative system within which Chinese democracy is practiced. This was contrary to the portrayal in western media; it was more similar to the practice of consensus democracy in Rwanda were the existence of many political parties is not acknowledged by western media. China is a big diverse country yet with a clear common vision.
The impression of the principle of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is that developing countries, while they could import foreign ideas, it was important to implement them while adopting to local conditions.
Chinese culture
Visiting various parts of China, one is quickly impressed upon that the Chinese people are welcoming and glad to see visitors from all over the world. While at the time, not many spoke fluent English, a reasonable number understood it and interpreters were at hand to help. The rich Chinese cuisines were a joy to partake in even though some of our colleagues had challenges adapting to the many exotic meals. Chinese food is a big cultural export with every major city in Africa having a Chinese restaurant as one the trendiest place to have a good lunch or dinner with an important guest. In Kigali, there are multiple Chinese restaurants of high quality and it earns good favour to conduct an informal business or diplomatic link up there.
China’s rise is changing the world forever significantly in helping create a multi-polar world, increase access to good and services which would otherwise be unaffordable to many in the global south. The example of China’s ability to develop and get hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in just about one generation is inspiration to many people’s in Africa and the global south in general about what is possible.
China will become a super power like no other; having overcome the ‘hundred years of humiliation’ to take its rightful place among the elites of the world, and pursing a foreign policy that abhors imperialism but encourages cooperation for the benefit of all of humanity, the good will benefit the entire world. It will be interesting to observe closely how China is leading in new technologies of clean energy, electric vehicles, 5, 6th Generational Mobile Network, Artificial Intelligence, medicine etc.
*The views and opinions expressed in the articles are solely those of the individual authors and do not reflect the position of the Secretariat of the Belt and Road Journalist Network.