Even before the dust of disruptions and devastation inflicted on lives and livelihoods by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic settles, robust conversations and actionable road-maps are well underway to facilitate a global recovery and, in particular, uplift struggling economies in Africa.
The sinister COVID-19 pandemic has resuscitated the urgent need for the recognition of a common humanity. If there has been an iota of doubt that the global community is intrinsically and irrevocably tied to a common destiny and shared future, the outbreak of the pandemic cleared that up. The dread of thermonuclear conflagration and the corollary of a mutual balance of nuclear capabilities among major powers as a meaningful deterrent have completely paled into insignificance when compared to the disaster inflicted by the pandemic.
However, lethal as it may be, COVID-19 has also exposed the reality of humankind's most potent weapon to confront the assault of its common afflictions, namely, solidarity and cooperation.
In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping outlined a vision of international cooperation. He laid out a framework for the construction of a community with a shared future for humanity, with a practical road-map of networks of infrastructure connectivity across land, maritime and air routes, thereby giving the concept of a global village a concrete expression.
The launch of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, known as the Belt and Road Initiative, is a major game-changer in the international governance system. It offers the impetus of consultation, collaboration and cooperation, critical tools of strategic international engagement that have proved extremely useful in the outbreak of COVID-19.
In a letter to the High-Level Video Conference on Belt and Road International Cooperation on June 18, Xi said, "Be it in taming the virus or in achieving economic recovery, we cannot succeed without solidarity, cooperation and multilateralism. The right approach to tackling global crises and realizing long-term development is through greater connectivity, openness and inclusiveness. This is where Belt and Road international cooperation can make a big difference."
For African countries, which are key partners in the Belt and Road Initiative, the difference that would be made in the post-COVID-19 recoveries of their economies through more engagement with the initiative cannot be overemphasized. For Africa and the rest of the world, the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been well documented. There is considerable consensus that post-pandemic recovery efforts would feature enhanced trade and increased domestic productivity, which would leverage efficient infrastructure. The strategic requirements for a speedy recovery and normalization of post-COVID-19 era are entrenched in the key elements of the Belt and Road Initiative.
As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at the high-level video conference, the Belt and Road Initiative "has evolved into the largest platform for international cooperation, playing an ever more important role in promoting development and prosperity around the world."
And to underline the practical significance of the initiative, he said in 2019, trade in goods between China and other Belt and Road Initiative participants topped $1.3 trillion, up by 6 percent year on year. Chinese investment in these countries increased by $15 billion. In the first quarter of this year, their trade rose by 3.2 percent, and direct investment by China was up by 11.7 percent on a yearly basis.
Even during the pandemic, the Belt and Road Initiative has advanced considerably, with phase one of the Nairobi-Malaba Railway coming into operation. Significantly, between January and May, the China-Europe freight train service witnessed a surge of 28 percent in trips and 32 percent in freight volume, witnessing the transportation of 12,524 tons of medical supplies. This served as a key cargo lifeline.
Far from holding countries back from the Belt and Road Initiative, COVID-19 has only underscored its strong resilience and vitality. There is no doubt that the initiative, whose foundation is already well aligned to the challenges of an international emergency, will be an indispensable driving force to bring brighter prospects to the world.
Africa's critical challenges in the pandemic and even the post-COVID-19 era could be reasonably addressed by the key and functional tools of the Belt and Road Initiative. The initiative outlines which international public goods align to the urgent needs for recovery and stabilization in Africa. Be it robust trade, critical and enabling infrastructure and the two engagement mechanisms of consultation and cooperation, the path to recovery and sustainable growth is clear.
Since 2018, when the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was held, many African countries have made the historic decision to enter into partnership with the Belt and Road Initiative framework of international cooperation. The challenges of the pandemic uniquely offer African countries an objective condition to not only reconsider the opportunities of the partnership, but also vigorously access it. The initiative will not be a wand that would magically solve all problems, especially the herculean challenges of post-COVID-19 recovery, but will certainly add to the arsenals of domestic policy initiatives of many participating countries and bring them to the path of sustainable and inclusive growth.
The Belt and Road Initiative and its dialogue framework rooted in extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits align with the emerging international structure of multilateralism, which was the goal of the historic struggles of the South, of which Africa has been the spiritual mainstream.
Beyond its symbolic significance as the bridge of comprehensive partnership between the North and the South, the initiative is practical and functional, offering diverse global public goods that could fit the specific national requirements of participating countries in a coordinated manner. This would strengthen the global system and advance humankind to a community with a shared future. Africa must find a niche in this process, especially in the current context of COVID-19 and its aftermath.
China and the world: Beyond the scourge of Coronavirus
IT has been nearly seven years since Beijing launched the most far-reaching and comprehensive global development framework, the "Belt and Road Initiative" in 2013, which the World Bank acknowledged as "China-led effort to improve connectivity and regional cooperation on a trans-continental scale through large scale investments". But the massive infrastructure connectivity already up and running in many regions of the world and also a work in progress would be the practical expression of the construction of a community of shared future for mankind which on March 11, 2017, was included in a UN security council resolution and in September of the same year, its underlying principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration was incorporated in the UN General Assembly resolution on global governance.
Some estimates suggest that over $900 billion of financing in grants and concessional loans for Belt and Road projects have been or about to be spent in more than 160 countries with three-fifths of the world population. According to The Economist magazine, "in real terms, that dwarfs the Marshall Plan ($130 billion in today's money) that America advanced to revive Europe's war-ravaged economies".
China's contribution to global economic growth from 2013-2018 on average was 28.1 percent, ranking first place in the world and largest trading partner for more than 120 countries in the world. According to a report issued last July from the Mckinsey Global Institute, from market perspective depending on China's engagement with the world in the coming years, economic value of between $22 trillion to $37 trillion could be added or subtracted from global economy by 2040. In the Mckinsey report which analysed 186 countries, China was found to be largest export destination for 33 countries and the largest source of imports for 65. In addition to its huge presence in trade, China has also grown over the years to become a major player in global investment flows. From 2015 to 2017, it was the world largest source of outbound foreign direct investment and second-largest recipient of inbound investment, according to the Mckinsey report.
At the centre of further unlocking trade and enabling the strategic connectivity through which it could be mutually and beneficially engaged by the world, the World Bank has acknowledged that the Belt and Road Initiative would reduce time and cost of international trade and boast cumulative global output, considerably contributing to shared prosperity and human prospects, despite the existing vicissitudes of the contemporary international system. Africa has particularly charted a brilliant course with the engagement of the China opportunities which is filling the gap of the continent's vacuum in building a network of critical infrastructures that are opening key prospect of regional economies of scale and optimising the comparative advantages of the respective national economies in the region.
There is no other international partnership with post-colonial states in Africa that has brought tangible results and outcomes as Africa-China cooperation whose concrete institutional expression has been the phenomenal Forum on China-Africa cooperation, FOCAC, founded in 2000. With China's enigmatic engagement with the world and the prospects it portends, how would the international community react to the outbreak of the coronavirus last December, but which grabbed international headlines from January. A monstrous, villainous virus that first hit Wuhan, capital city of China’s Hubei province, did not just threaten China but the entire global prospects not because Beijing is in the frontline of it, but even for the ethical values of our common humanity most robustly demonstrated in 2018 when Thailand teenage football players and their coach were entrapped in a horrific flooded cave.
The outbreak of the novel disease raised concern across the world but the global health governing body, the World Health Organisation urged caution and restraint in reaction, and also giving the Chinese authorities a clean bill of health in transparency and competence in managing and containing the spread of the virus after declaring Covid-19 epidemic "a public health emergency of international concern".
The World Health Organisation further added that "the only way we will defeat this outbreak is for all countries to work together in a spirit of solidarity and cooperation. We are all in this together and we can only stop it together. This is the time for facts, not fear. This is the time for science, not rumours. This is the time for solidarity, not stigma."
In two straight years, China has organised two world import expo to bring the opportunities of China's huge market to the world, along with other batteries of reform measures to open wider and deeper the Chinese market. A novel virus is actually not needed to pull down Chinese economy for others to add jobs or other opportunities to their economies.
As Chinese ambassador to Nigeria, Dr. Zhou Pingjian said recently at a dialogue forum organised by Abuja-based Think Tank, that "it is understandable that some countries have taken necessary and appropriate preventive measures", but added: "We disapprove of measures out of proportion", because "as World Health Organisation insists, there is no pandemic yet and there is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international trade". He assured that "guided by vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, China is fulfilling its responsibility for life and health of its own people and for global public health" and that her "effective response has averted the further spread of the virus in the world".
According to the envoy, his country is "a resilient nation that has emerged stronger from numerous trials and tribulations", that "with its people united as one under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, CPC, with China's institutional strength in mobilising resources for major undertaking and with strong material and technological capacities and with rich experience, China has the confidence, capacity and determination to not only win a full victory against the epidemic but also meet its economic and social development goals".
Suffice it to summarise here that given to the fact that the theoretical foundation of the Communist Party of China is to constantly engage contradictions and contradictions are not linear categories of happy endings, the country's governance outlook is primed to anticipate emergencies with huge national reservoir of human and material contingencies, always in place to deal and contain the excesses before it disrupts the social order and threaten stability. Therefore, outbreak of the coronavirus is not outside the realm of emergencies anticipated by China's system of eternal vigilance.
Onunaiju is Research Director, Centre for China Studies, Utako, Abuja.
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/02/china-and-the-world-beyond-the-scourge-of- coronavirus/
