The Seres [Chinese] are a race eminent for integrity and well known for the trade. …

Pomponius Mela, Roman geographer, AD 43

When my youngest son and his wife volunteered for medical work in Africa, his biggest concern was not safety (riots, robbers, kidnappings, political uprisings, lions) or health (malaria, typhoid, dengue fever), or even living in an insufferably hot climate with no air conditioning. My sons grew up in China, and after living with a dad who dragged them 100,000 km exploring their adopted home, they’re tough. But Matt did have one worry—that he’d not be able to cook Chinese food, but his first week he wrote, “Even our remote village has a tiny Chinese grocery store!”

I understand Matt’s concern. The French playwright and poet, Moliere (1622–1673), said, “One should eat to live, not live to eat,” but I say, “Moliere never ate Chinese food!”

Matt could handle Africa once he found that a Chinese family had set aside one room of their house to sell staples like spices, tofu and bamboo shoots to the Chinese building a nearby dam. And as Matt discovered, every corner of Africa had Chinese working to help the vast continent in the same way China had lifted itself from poverty—building infrastructure.

Four Thousand Years of Foreign Trade

By 2019, the Belt and Road Initiative’s 69 participants accounted for over 62% of the global population, 31% of global GDP and 33% of global trade volume. Western pundits have written about China’s “new openness” but, in reality, China was trading with Europe, Africa and Asia almost 4000 years ago—long before most modern nations existed.

Researchers found 3800-year-old Caucasian mummies along the Silk Road in N. W. China, some of them wearing “Austrian” twill. A 3000-year-old mummy in Egypt was found to have remnants of silk fabric, which was only made in China. The Han Dynasty (221 BC–AD 206) sent 10 or more embassies yearly to Central Asia to trade for their spirited stallions. Ethiopians sent an envoy to China in AD 100. In AD 43, the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela wrote that the Seres [Chinese] were “a race eminent for integrity and well known for the trade….”

Over 1100 years ago, Canton had 120,000 foreigners from all over the known world, and the start of the Maritime Silk Road, Xi Jinping’s inspiration for the BRI, was Fujian’s Quanzhou Harbor, which Marco Polo said had 100 ships for every one ship in the West. Trade was so good that the Southern Song Emperor Gao Zong (1107–1187) said, “Maritime trade profits are very great—perhaps millions, if managed well… Isn’t this better than taxing the people?”

I was not surprised when Harvard Business Review claimed in March, 2014, “Until the early nineteenth century, China’s economy was more open and market driven than the economies of Europe.” In 1842, China was an open, economic powerhouse with 32% of the global GDP. But that was also the year that China lost the First Opium War, and by 1942, after 100 years of foreign occupation and military-backed opium trade, China’s share of GDP had plummeted from 32% to less than 5%.

Africa: Wealthiest and Poorest Continent

Africa, like China and India, was also destroyed. Africa is so large it could hold Europe, China and the USA and still have room left over. But even though Africa is by far the richest continent in resources, it is also by far the poorest continent economically because, for centuries, Europeans had carved the continent into colonies and exported everything of worth—including the people themselves as slaves.

With everything of value shipped out of Africa, there was no need for infrastructure between the countries themselves, which resulted in Africa’s infamous “growth without development”.

In 1980, vast Africa had only 0.4% of global manufacturing, and that dwindled to 0.3% by 2003. But by 2014 it had increased 500% to 1.5%—not much, but even that little progress was only because China had begun attacking poverty in Africa the same way it had at home. As Chinese had said for decades, “To prosper, first build roads,” and with Xi Jinping’s inauguration of the BRI in 2013, this philosophy was extended to other countries as well.

Hillary Clinton, former U.S. secretary of state, warned Africa to deal only with “responsible nations” and not those nations [China] who only wanted to exploit their resources. Africans laughed at Clinton. As South African President Zuma said, “Africa’s past economic experience with Europe dictates a need to be cautious when entering into partnerships with other economies. We certainly are convinced that China’s intention is different to that of Europe, which to date continues to attempt to influence African countries for their sole benefit.”

China’s New Hope for Africa

China’s intentions toward Africa were evident very early on. The famous consulting firm, McKinsey and Company, observed:

Even in 1978, when China was just emerging from the devastating effects of its Cultural Revolution and was itself one of the world’s poorest countries, it provided foreign aid to 74 countries – and to more in Africa than the United States did.Footnote 1

In the 1960s, China built the Tanzania-Zambia (TANZARA) Railway. Westerners were quick to point out that the railroad failed after Africans took over, but China learned from that experience that in addition to building infrastructure, it needed to train Africans to maintain and manage the new projects. Today, for example, China is funding and building a railway academy in Ethiopia.

China is also training Africa’s future engineers, economists and leaders with scholarships to study in China. I’ve met many of these future leaders at my own Xiamen University, which is China’s No. 1 in accounting, and they are thankful that China is giving Africa hope for the first time in centuries.

In Andrew Mwenda’s TEDGlobal 2007 talk, “Aid for Africa? No thanks,” he noted that Africa received 600 million in aid between 1960 to 2003. “Where has all the aid gone?” he asked. Most of it went for health, food and education but little for actual development. Mwenda asked his audience, “Can any one of you tell me a neighbor, a friend, a relative that you know, who became rich by receiving charity? By holding the begging bowl and receiving alms?”

China, however, has learned from its own experience that the only sustainable approach to poverty is not “donating blood”, which can create dependency, but “producing blood” to engender self-sufficiency and, as Xi Jinping has said for years, “heal the poverty of spirit.”

Why Africa Respects China

McKinsey and Company (June 2010) summed up why Africans respect China’s approach:

Yet China’s recent development trajectory – lifting hundreds of millions of its people from poverty in the past 30 years – offers Africans lessons and hope. Other factors adding to China’s credibility are its pragmatic, business-like approach to development and focus on much-needed infrastructure projects. Also, Chinese workers are generally well-respected because they are prepared to work in Africa’s fields or factories, often at the locals’ salaries, in contrast to the wages, housing, and approaches of Western aid organizations or commercial enterprises. For this reason, China still explicitly rejects the label of donor.Footnote 2

China empowers nations to lift themselves from poverty by building highways, railways, airports, bridges, dams, power plants, schools and hospitals. The World Bank has estimated that such BRI projects could reduce travel times by 12%, increase trade 2.7–9.7% and increase incomes by up to 3.4%, lifting millions from extreme poverty. And these huge projects have paved the way for smaller and more diverse investments by entrepreneurs the world over in everything from agriculture to banking, insurance, transport and logistics, housing and telecommunications.

McKinsey Associate Partner Irene Yuan Sun says:

Chinese manufacturing investment is the best hope that Africa has to industrialize in this generation. Chinese involvement in Africa is not just about state-driven efforts. A just as large, if not larger, component is these private enterprises, which are more job-intensive, which localize quicker and which have a much larger economic and social impact.Footnote 3

Alibaba founder Jack Ma visited several African countries in August 2018, and set up the “Ma Yun African Venture Fund” to help over 100 African start-ups. On November 16, 2019, this fund hosted the finals for the African Entrepreneurs Competition in Accra, Ghana and awarded a USD 1 million prize to each of the top ten from more than 10,000 contestants.

But in a developing country, it doesn’t take USD 1 million to bring change; sometimes USD 50 can do the trick. My son Matt found that mothers in one village walked six hours a day just for water, so he surfed the internet for solutions, paid a local blacksmith fifty dollars to forge an iron drill bit, and helped villagers dig a well. Now that the village has its own water, the government sent a teacher and built a school, and the entire village now has hope and a future.

How the West Benefits from BRI

Some nations still oppose BRI in spite of its benefits, but that does not stop them from capitalizing upon the efficient new infrastructure. In October, 2019, India shipped cargo from Navasiva, India to Tashkent Uzbekistan in the far west via rail from Xiamen on China’s east coast. In spite of the zigzagging east and west, shipping was nearly 20 days faster than alternative routes.

The U.S. government criticizes BRI but PVH, the U.S. owner of brands like Calvin Klein, Van Heusen, Tommy Hilfiger, Speedo and Izod, is the top job provider at Hawassa Industrial Park, an eco-friendly park built in only nine months by China’s state-owned China Civil Engineering Corporation.

Royal HaskoningDHV (RHDHV), a global Dutch engineering firm with offices in South Africa, partnered with the Chinese state-owned construction firm the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, Ltd. in building airports.

Sonatrach, Algeria’s state-owned oil company and Africa’s largest company, signed a USD 445 million contract with China Harbor Engineering Company for port installations in eastern Algeria because it was the only option to increase production and expand international markets.

As Pippa Morgan wrote in The Diplomat (March 2018):

And, of course, PVH and other global investors could not run their businesses – and create thousands of coveted manufacturing jobs – without the railways, roads, and power stations that China is constructing all over Ethiopia… Investors desperately need roads, electricity, water, and the internet. With traditional Western partners either unwilling or unable to fund these at scale, and low tax revenues due to the country’s poverty, how else can the Ethiopian government build the basic infrastructure that we take for granted in the developed world? Without Chinese help, Western money for training and other ‘soft’ sectors is sinking money into a black hole, and Ethiopia risks being ‘too poor to develop’ – condemned to survive on subsistence agriculture and international handouts.

China’s economic investments also promote positive social change. In 2019, Forbes Global 2000 ranked Zijin Mining as No. 1 in the world in gold production and No. 1 in China in non-ferrous metals production. I’ve learned much about its far flung operations in places such as Tajikistan, Peru, Australia and Russia because some of its managers have been my MBA students. Zijin’s economic benefits to the Democratic Republic of the Congo helped stabilize the nation and bring about its first smooth and democratic power transition with the election of President Felix Tshisekedi in early 2019. The World Bank hailed this as “an extraordinary opportunity” to improve the country’s civil rights.

The “Chinese Laborer in Africa” Myth

A common criticism of BRI is that China sends its own laborers instead of hiring locals, but a McKinsey survey of over 400 Chinese companies in over 40 African countries showed over 80% of workers were Africans. China’s 10,000 plus firms in Africa have not only created jobs for several million Africans but have also provided technical training and transfer of technology. Zijin Mining trained Africans for 1500 skilled jobs, and Huawei founded the West Africa training school in Nigeria to hone African engineers’ skills. I visited Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters and spoke with a manager who had worked in Africa, and was heartened by how the company treated African team members. And just as they’d done in remote Tibet, Huawei provided communications services to remote areas of Africa even when they had no way of ever making a profit.

In Ethiopia, 82 Chinese companies with a total output of USD 730 million have created over 10,000 jobs in the Ethiopia Eastern Industrial Zone, which was built in 2007 by a private Chinese company. China’s newly created free trade zones in places like Djibouti are becoming global trade and logistics hubs linking Africa, Asia and Europe.

China differs from the West not just in economic strategies but also in how the Chinese themselves work with the peoples of other countries. Ben Olander of smallpower.org said:

You walk down the street of Kinshasa, you see Chinese people working side by side with Africans in a way that you just don’t see Europeans and Americans do.

The West’s Skills Gap in Africa

Olander also pointed out the U.S.’s growing “skills gap”:

Half a century ago, American engineers of all flavors could be found in Africa and elsewhere designing similar infrastructure projects as what the Chinese are doing today. The United States no longer generates enough engineering talents for its domestic market, much less to deploy to developing countries. Instead, the United States exports legions of consultants and so-called ‘development experts’ who seemingly do little more than write reports, attend meetings and work from the air conditioned comfort of their secure office compounds. The Chinese, in contrast, have a seemingly endless supply of highly trained engineers who are now deployed across Africa to build communication, road and electrical networks. Our skill sets no longer line up with the needs of the people that we are working with. The real reason why the Chinese have been effective is that the Chinese are sending people that will get their hands dirty, not just consultants to sit in chauffeured driven SUVs, air conditioning blasting, go from one office to another office, never actually working with the people they are supposed to be reaching.

Yet another criticism of BRI is the partner nations’ debt risk, but China is working to reduce that risk with diversified financing such as equity financing and bonds, and it now has currency swap agreements with over 20 BRI countries. Some African countries like Zambia, Angola, Gabon and Sudan already have a trade surplus with China, and China is considering canceling RMB10.5 billion in debt for 31 African countries facing unexpected challenges.

China is also promoting BRI green initiatives to balance greening and growing as it has at home. Almost 20 financial institutions from 10 countries and regions signed the BRI Green Investment Principle created by The City of London and the China Society for Finance and Banking to promote green development along the Belt and Road.

McKinsey: The Future Is Africa

“The rate of return on foreign investment is higher in Africa than in any other developing region,” McKinsey Quarterly noted in June, 2010. “Global executives and investors must pay heed.” Yet in spite of Africa’s vast opportunities, many Western companies have no Africa strategy because they think Africa is a scary place to do business and unpredictable.

The BRI does indeed entail great risks. Chinese in Africa face political and economic instability, corruption, violence, kidnapping of workers and executives, wars and challenging health conditions. Nevertheless, since the 1950s China has felt that Africa has suffered long enough, the risks are worth it—and it is the only moral thing to do.

For five centuries, many of today’s great powers enriched themselves not through true trade but through colonialism, opium and slave trafficking. But in all of recorded history, China has never occupied a distant land or engaged in anything but peaceful and mutually beneficial trade and exchange. And for decades, New China’s leaders have said that no society is prosperous if any live in poverty.

With BRI, China is now taking this value to a global level because, on such a small planet as ours, no nation can be prosperous while others remain impoverished—or at war.