Unpacking the Beijing Consensus

Lovemore Chikova News Editor
China’s development assistance model, which emphasises on win-win cooperaton, has the potential to help fellow developing countries out of poverty. The development model, which some prefer to call the Beijing Consensus, is based on mutual respect, mutual benefit and mutual understanding. This is also the principle on which China’s foreign policy, which is aimed at maintaining world peace and ensuring that countries concentrate on development, is anchored. China has a deliberate policy through which it treats other countries as equal partners and maintains a stance of non-interference in the sovereignty of other countries.

In fact, the major lesson from how the Asian country is interacting with other developing countries, especially those in Africa, is that one should never underestimate their development partners.

This is in sharp contrast to the Western model of development which is centred around the Washington Consensus.

Western countries, which control major international development agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are known to impose numerous political conditions that hinder the smooth flow of assistance to developing countries.

This means that countries have to forsake their own initiatives to develop themselves and align themselves to Western countries’ views and policies.

This has a negative effect on the sovereignty of nations, as the developing countries have to dance to the tune of Western countries for them to get assistance.

For example, relations between Zimbabwe and the IMF and the World Bank soured when Government embarked on the land reform programme and after President Mugabe criticised homosexuality.

Homosexuality is not accepted in many African countries. But Zimbabwe was blacklisted partly because of its stance against homosexuality.

On the land reform, the Western countries were concerned about preserving the status of a few white farmers who lost land that was distributed to the majority.

The land reform programme was part of Zimbabwe’s development agenda, yet Western countries considered the fate of their kith and kin who lost the land.

Instead of partnering with Zimbabwe in its development aspirations, the Western countries considered the redistribution of land to the landless as an abuse of human rights of about 4 500 white farmers.

This is the opposite of the developmental agenda being pursued by China.

That developmental model ensures that foreign investment does not interfere with the internal affairs of other nations.

This explains why China has managed to transform the status of several developing countries within a short period.

The model being used by China is targeted at eliminating poverty and ensuring that it raises the standard of living in developing countries.

China and Africa have a lot in common in terms of their historical links and how imperialists interfered with their internal affairs during colonisation.

And this is why China understands Africa’s development aspirations far much better than Western countries do.

China realises that there will be no world peace as long as other continents wallow in poverty.

Recent interactions with top Chinese officials showed that the Asian country’s aspiration is to see peace prevailing in the world to allow nations to concentrate on uplifting the lives of their citizens.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has been leading by example in the implementation of such a development model.

If sustainably pursued, China’s policy towards developing countries, especially those in Africa, will help balance world affairs.

At the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, last year, President Xi expounded this policy.

“What has made China-Africa friendship durable and vigorous is that our two sides have always been guided by the principle of treating each other as equals, promoting win-win progress and common development and enhancing sincere friendship and cooperation,” he said.

“China and Africa will forever remain good friends, good partners and good brothers.”

China realises that Africa is now ready for rapid development, especially considering that the continent possesses mineral wealth that can be leveraged to attract investment.

A good observation being that most countries on the continent have their minerals still lodged underground and they do not have the means to extract them.

Minerals that are still underground are as good as a non-existent in the development matrix of a country.

Most African countries do not have the money to pay for the construction of infrastructure and for undertaking other poverty alleviation projects.

But China is awakening them to the reality that they can leverage their minerals to help establish the necessary infrastructure.

President Xi summarised China’s policy towards Africa as guided by political equality and mutual trust, win-win economic cooperation, mutually enriching cultural exchanges, mutual assistance in security and solidarity and coordination in international affairs.

The 10-point plan for cooperation with African countries, which he unveiled at the Focac summit in South Africa, is in sync with the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

The AU envisages that all the 54 countries on the continent should be enjoying some form of industrialisation by that year.

But the continental body realises that such a feat cannot be achieved without the help of development partners.

And this is where China has proved a reliable development partner.

The Asian economic giant has since set aside $60 billion to help move forward African countries’ development agenda in line with the Agenda 2063.

This amount includes $35 billion of concessional loans, $5 billion of grant and zero-interest loans and another $5 billion for the China-Africa Development Fund and the Special Loan for the Development of African small to medium enterprises.

The remaining $10 billion will form the China-Africa Fund for Production Capacity Cooperation.

China’s cooperation with African countries is part of strengthening South-South cooperation aimed at establishing a strong bloc of developing countries.

The Asian country has proved that it is offering an alternative to African countries on how they can ensure they rapidly move towards industrialisation.

China recently formed the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which African countries are free to join.

The bank is viewed as a game changer in pursuit of the new development model being pursued by China.

AIIB will concentrate on the development of infrastructure in member countries, as a way of strengthening their resilience in their development agendas.

The formation of the bank means that China had noticed a gap left by the multilateral institutions that needed to be filled urgently.

The AIIB is expected to do business in a different way with existing world financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank.

China is the largest contributor to the AIIB, that is capitalised to the tune of not less than $100 billion.

Professor Deborah Brautigam summarised the new development model by China in a report she did for the Norwegian Investment Fund for Development Countries in 2011.

She noted that Western countries usually attach political conditions to their aid.

But China is now encouraging its private sector to invest in African countries, instead of offering government to government aid.

“Beijing has argued that countries be free to find their own pathways of eliminating poverty,” wrote Prof Brautigam. “This is not the way the West thinks.

“China’s core ideas about development are different than our (Western countries) changing recipes, they derive from China’s own development experience.”

China’s experience has shown that attracting foreign capital is the panacea to development.

This is why the Asian country’s status changed within a few years after it pronounced the reform and opening up policy in the late 1970s.

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