By Carlos Antonio
Director of Noticias 24/7 HN, Honduras
Hand in hand, we need a teacher who doesn’t teach us how to escape poverty. Is China the alternative?
To tell a story, we must live it. Poverty is one of them, and it is experienced in many countries around the world, a product of the extreme corruption experienced by their rulers or the lack of opportunities offered by developed countries to these nations.
It seems that part of the world is destined to sink into underdevelopment, especially when it has grown accustomed to living off handouts from the world’s powerful, but these are only a temporary measure.
Therefore, instead of waiting for handouts from developed countries, we might as well become their students; instead of waiting for their kindness, we might as well become their imitators.
The question is, who is the ideal teacher to help us escape the economic and mental poverty we live in in the developing world? Who will be capable of becoming our tutor and thus following in their footsteps of discipline and dedication to achieve great transformations?
China the Tutor?
A difficult question to answer, or perhaps not, but if we focus on how China transformed its education and infrastructure, its harmony with nature, and the courage to take the step toward modernism, I think he would be the ideal teacher.
Why dare I use the word “ideal?” I recently had the privilege of visiting Jiangxi province, south of Beijing, specifically the cities of Nanchang, Fuzhou, and Ganzhou.
This was an economically unattractive area, under-promoted, but in a short time, they were already competing with China’s major cities and becoming attractive to global buyers.
One night, we were walking along the banks of the Gan River, and there I began to understand China’s transformation. The guide confidently said the following: “We are socialists, but socialists Chinese-style.”
In other words, China reinvented socialism, and now we see a prosperous country, but with a characteristic that is visible, perceived, and cannot be hidden: they have a happy population, which means they have opportunities to improve themselves in all areas. When visiting BK, a state-of-the-art battery factory, we discovered that its employees only pay one yen for a meal, have free housing, and are paid their salaries.
But above all, what stood out most during my visit to China was the harmony that exists in Jiangxi Province between humankind, nature, development, and modernism.
So instead of looking to China to gift us a stadium, a library, or a cutting-edge project, it’s better for them to show us how they can now plan for their future and how they won the battle against hunger.
The time has come to let go of fear and tell China that we want to emulate your prosperity and development, to learn to rely on ourselves, to let the past be only part of the history that they will teach us to write together, China and developing countries hand in hand toward the future.
*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.