– and what it means for the west In an extract from a new book, China's aspirational approach to education and investment in Africa is distinguished from the west's focus on basic needs.
By Stephen Chan
The Guardian - May 12, 2013
The da xue (Mandarin: the big study, or the big reading) or dai ho(k)
(Cantonese: the big learning) are Chinese terms for a university. In
the romance of the "old days", learning was the only way to bypass the
class system. China's
annual imperial exams allowed even the poorest subject to step outside
his poverty and feudal status to become an official. When, later,
learning became concentrated in universities, the institutions became
prestigious and symbolic. They were the portals of escape.
With this in mind, it is amazing that Chinese aid to Africa
has not seized earlier upon the building of universities. The addition
of universities was unremarked in the original Chinese proposal for the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC) in 2008. China pledged a $9bn loan, $3bn of which was to develop
mines, over which China entered a 68/32% joint venture involving
Sinohydro Corporation and DRC's previously almost defunct Gecamines; and
$6bn was for infrastructure, with China Railway Engineering Corporation
playing a major role.
The Chinese expected to gain 6.8m
tonnes of copper and 620,000 tonnes of cobalt over a 25-year period.
However, China would also build huge expanses of road and railway and,
along those transport routes, a large number of clinics, schools and
universities. It was an unheard-of proposal; it would have transformed
development in the south of DRC, with provision for a huge increase in
the national pool of trained personnel; and it thoroughly alarmed the
west, which saw an exponential increase of Chinese influence in central
Africa.
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