The Black Man’s Burden: The Diaspora's Urgent Mandate to Awaken Africa's Sleeping Giants
Part II: How the Chinese Diaspora paved the way for the Chinese Economic Miracle - Hong Kong
Technology, foreign direct investment and international trade are the levers of economic success and expansion today. There is no world where the continent of Africa becomes rich where this reality is overlooked. The African Diaspora - defined as those living outside of their African country of birth - number around 40 million, according to rough estimates, and they may hold the keys to unleashing waves of growth throughout Africa. Many of them reside in different parts of Europe and North America, while a sizeable chunk can be found in other African countries, with smaller populations scattered across Asia and the Middle East.
Global partnerships are necessary in getting the continent off the ground, and the Diaspora can source the connections. In light of this acknowledgement, I must stress that the global partnerships I speak of go beyond foreign aid programs and donations. In my eyes, aid actually does more harm than good by creating a culture of dependency between donor and recipient countries. Furthermore, over time it has become a bail-out of sorts for corrupt and incompetent leadership and institutions across Africa. And I believe that state-sponsored, bilateral aid needs a drastic scaling back. For more on this, read my article on why we need to make international aid history.
It’s also important to point out that in its pursuit for comprehensive and expansive access to the three aforementioned pillars of economic success, Africa’s need for global partnerships is not unique. A similar reality applies or applied to almost every nation and region on this planet at one stage or another.
Even in the case of long industrialized Western Europe, global partnership and sharing spurred major economic metamorphosis. Ancient Romans introduced roads, plumbing and sewerage works and republican principles to different corners of Europe. England marking as one notable beneficiary of such contact. Indeed, after 400 years of Roman occupation came to an end in 410 A.C. the country regressed into poverty, stagnation and dissolution shortly thereafter. That was, until another occupation by the Normandy from across the channel in France kickstarted a slow march to its ascendance as the world superpower of Great Britain and the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. As the new Norman overlords introduced new forms of government, data collection and record-keeping, as well as concepts of higher forms of freedom and equality.
The Spanish and the Portuguese were the first to truly set sail from Europe onto the rest of the world, opening up a literal New World for the rest of the region to exploit. But the Dutch essentially blew the doors of modern finance open, of which Britain and the rest of Europe relied upon for real expansion. We can go on, but the point is, evolution is not singular and isolated. Everyone, at one point, was the understudy in need of guidance in order to find a way out and upwards - Africa is no exception to this.
Major beneficiaries of global partnership and sharing in recent memory include China. Over a 30 year period - from 1949 to 1980 - China adapted a version of central planning inspired and supported by their close neighbour to the north, Russia. Private land ownership was outlawed by the state, farmers were compelled to work to state quotas whereby the bulk of any surplus harvests were directed away from them to the government. Even worse, the economy was almost entirely closed off to trade, investment and visitation from the outside world. Think of North Korea today, but on a much larger scale.
Granted, there are positives to be taken from the Mao Zedong-led regime. He liberated China from the foreign occupation and subjugation rooted in the bai nian guo chi (Century of Humiliation) period. The status of women also improved considerably across the country under his reign, along with education and literacy rates for the population at large. With that said, the economy went stagnant for decades, poverty was rife and characterized by mass famine and political upheaval that took the lives of tens of millions of people. Communism did not deliver on stability and heightened living standards. Indeed, as someone who spent half a decade living in China, I can confidently say that you will find noone who wishes that China goes back to the times of tight-pressed communism and central planning.
China’s fast track paved path to prosperity begun under Communist revolutionary and a formerly imprisoned Deng Xiaoping. Under his leadership, the country opened its doors up to modern capitalism and free markets as part of the gai ge kai fang or ‘Reform and Opening’ age. Contrary to the popular and heavily condensed narrative surrounding this time, It all started with a slow burn rather than a bang.
China implemented market reform in small increments and launched four special economic zones (SEZs) across the nation. Here, restrictions on foreign ownership and investment were mostly stripped away relative to the rest of the region, making them the go-to places for private enterprise to operate.
The Original Four SEZs were Zhuhai, Shantou, Xiamen, and the most famous of them all, Shenzhen. If you look at where all of them are located then you’ll quickly find that that they are all in relatively close proximity to Hong Kong and Taiwan. One of them (Xiamen) is also in Fujian Province. In 1990, nearly one third of the Chinese global diaspora descended from this province, with them arguably being the face of Overseas Chinese around the globe. The choice of SEZs were of no accident. The extended Chinese diaspora and family, with all their exposure to business and industrial practices beyond the borders of the Mainland, served as the frame that grounded China’s window into the rest of the world.
Starting with Hong Kong, a former British colony that is now officially a part of the People’s Republic of China, and has been since 1997. Hong Kong was conceded to the British by the Chinese as a result of the 1843 Treaty of Nanking. Similarly to former colonial possessions such as Singapore and The Gambia, the British established it as a port city, focused on receiving and processing trade from the rest of the globe, into China and the broader Asia-Pacific region.
From the early days of its inception, manufacturing and the re-export of goods from elsewhere quickly became part of its bread and butter. So much so that bit-by-bit, Hong Kong was able to elevate itself into a major manufacturing hub for boats and ships, textiles and toys by the time the 1960’s and 1970’s came along. However, once the 1980’s were ushered in global macroeconomic trends necessitated a shift in industry mix for the city. Manufacturing’s prominence waned in the face of high oil prices and rising protectionist measures overseas, and thus, the exploration of the Mainland began.
Despite how relations between Hong Kong and Beijing may look now, they were once a match made in heaven. As we retrace our steps back to the eighties, timing-wise, the stars had aligned damn-near perfectly for the two: Mainland China had hordes of cheap land and labour, and Hong Kong boasted the industrial and management expertise, along with the trading network and infrastructure.
Hong Kong’s location and the local population’s osmosis and integration of British and broader international business practices and customs enabled them to rapidly channel and foster foreign direct investment, trade and technology into the Mainland. Guangdong Province was home to three of the four original SEZs selected by Beijing, all within a province that surrounds all of Hong Kong, where many of the people spoke the same language as Hong Kongers in Cantonese and shared cultural similarities. The rest of China was finally coming of age, and a distant brother in Hong Kong was now showing them the ropes of the Made in China family business.