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2015-12-22

"Win-win" easy said than done

Comments on Daniel Poon "China sets out its FOCAC focus in Africa", 20/12/2015

I agree with the author for the following: “A central challenge remains in devising a ‘win–win’ institutional mechanism that can contribute to the dynamic growth objectives of both China and its partner countries over time.”

Further, while financing is obviously important, money itself alone is unlikely to be enough to resolve institutional issues.

China should not assume that its model can be easily applicable to or adopted by those partner countries.

China now has a very strong central leadership with great visions. It requires equally strong bureaucratic capacity to realise those visions. They need to act with strong motivation and incentive in the interests of the country, as opposed to simply follow orders. Under the current political environment, it is not completely certain such capable bureaucrats exist in China.

I am not arguing that Chinese bureaucrats are not capable, I would question whether they are willing to take risks when it is necessary to do so.

PS: There are two issues China needs to pay close attention. Firstly, China should uphold very high lending standard in approaching the "One belt one road" initiative and be very careful so that it will not fall into the same trap of the sub-prime lending crisis in the US before the GFC, on an international scale.

Secondly, the "top down" or "top designing" nature of the "one belt one road" strategy/initiative, if not handled carefully, could develop into very political in China. As a result, China must guard so to avoid any tendency into a politically driven campaign. While it is very remote, political campaigns run the risk to repeat the disastrous, costly and painful lessons of the Great Leap Forward.

Further: What I meant is reflected in the following quotation from an article by Gong Fangbin (公方彬), a professor at the Chinese Defence University: “国家开展强力反腐以来,有一个现象引起了各方关注:即不出事也不做事。这个问题不解决,反腐的意义和作用就会大打折扣。”
It means: “Since the strong national anti corruption drive, there has been one phenomena that is the concern of many: Don’t do anything at all, so you don’t look like you are doing anything corrupt”
His article, in Chinese, can be seen: http://news.sina.com.cn/zl/zatan/blog/2015-12-23/10255170/2994662287/b27eeb8f0102wh3h.shtml

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