By
Bernard Bwoni
China
owns US$1.317 trillion of the US Government’s Treasury bonds and you never hear
anyone commenting that China is colonising the USA? In the case of Zimbabwe you
often hear sensational headlines as ‘Zimbabwe Government ‘sells out’ to China
or ‘Zimbabwe mortgaging Zimbabwe’s future to China’. His Excellency President Mugabe
is currently in China to negotiate a package to fund the country’s ZIMASSET
blue-print and other infrastructural development projects. Just as with the
relationship between China and the US, President Mugabe’s trip is purely a
business and the key is mutually beneficial engagement. The country is
negotiating for a US$4 billion rescue package to steady the economy and start
implementing major infrastructure developments. The Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT)
Project Delivery System is a way to finance big projects especially
infrastructure projects through public-private partnerships where China will
receive a concession from the government to construct big infrastructure
development projects in Zimbabwe. This enables China to recover her billions of
investment in the project and at the end of the concession period the end
project provides that the infrastructure belongs to Zimbabwe and China has her
investment back. China will implement the infrastructure projects in the ‘Build’
phase, will get its investment during the agreed period of ‘Operate’ and at the
end of the ‘Operate’ phase the project will ‘Transfer’ to the Government of
Zimbabwe. This is a mutually beneficial agreement where Zimbabwe will acquire power
plants, major highways, huge solar projects, railways, airports, water supply
facilities and China will also benefit from her investment and recover the
costs of funding the projects. The Chinese will fund new and existing capital
projects under the BOT basis and this will ensure that the country pays for the
projects over a long period. This allows for tangible development and the tax
burden will not fall on the already struggling people of Zimbabwe. Some
sceptics have expressed concern that the country is planning to sideline the
State Procurement Board and award government infrastructure projects to Chinese
state companies without going to tender. But these are government to government
initiatives to fund national projects there is no need for them to go through
tender. There are many countries world over using or have used BOT initiatives to
fund huge infrastructure projects and these include the Saudis with their oil, Abu
Dhabi, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and the Channel Tunnel was constructed on the
backdrop of a BOT with a 60 year concession period. So when you hear such
statements as President Mugabe has gone to China to mortgage the country and
that this is a ‘so-called new form of colonialism’ but the point remains that
it is just a BOT, purely a commercial deal that is not only unique to Zimbabwe.
China’s engagement with Africa has in
fact resulted in real and concrete productive assets such as infrastructural
development and that engagement with the Chinese is about productivity,
economic transformation and real development and not soft surface issues such
as a proliferation of NGOs which foster more of dependence as opposed to
innovation and self-sustenance. The engagement with China is seems genuinely
based on mutual respect and mutually beneficial outcomes. There is concrete,
visible and tangible evidence of the roads and other infrastructure that China
is building in Africa whereas engagement with traditional development
‘partners’ continues to witness conflict after conflict in any area of
resource-abundance.
All eyes seem to be looking to the East side of the
continent and final destination China. The vision of one extraordinary African,
HE President Mugabe was to look east when all other avenues were locked shut by
the country’s traditional engagement partners who always seem to prosper at the
misery and suffering of others. Now this vision is equally shared by the same
traditional engagement partners and as President Mugabe begins his weeklong
visit to China at the invitation of Mr Xi Jinping we explore how this look east
is not ‘a new form of colonisation of Africa by China’ as some in Zimbabwe and
in the western media have made us to believe. It is only just over six months
ago that the British Prime Minister Mr Cameron, British Chancellor of the
Exchequer Mr Osborne and Mayor of London Boris Johnson all led individual high
powered business and trade delegations to China. That went to pass without
anyone proclaiming that Britain was being colonised by China. It is what it is,
purely a business deal. The US and Europe have been tripping over each other seeking
economic lifelines from the same Chinese they claim are on a ‘new form of
colonising Africa’. It was an honour watching our President being welcomed with
such honour from our honourable friends from China. He was welcomed with a full
honour guard outside the Great Hall of the People where he received a 21-gun
salute. That is the nature of the relationship with our engagement partners
from the east, mutual respect. You compare that with our traditional engagement
partners who put conditionality after conditionality to the engagement and that
was evidenced in the recent EU-Africa Summit and US-Africa Summit. The public ridicule
to a Head of State and all the spanners in the works are an indication of
engagement that is not based on mutual respect. Zimbabwe is going to triumph
and that is thanks to the vision from the country’s look east policy.
bernardbwoni.blogspot.com
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