Belt, Road and a Pearl from China

Augetto Graig - Namibia’s inclusion in the most ambitious economic transformation strategy in the world today - China’s Belt and Road Initiative - is a given, following Pres Hage Geingob and his Chinese counterpart, Pres Xi Jinping, signing of the memorandum of understanding in Beijing in September this year. Xi first introduced the dream of recreating the incredible feat of ancient China, but remade for a modern era, back in 2013. Speaking at a university in Kazakhstan, he proposed to join hands with the neighbouring country in building a “Silk Road” economic belt with innovative cooperation mode, and to make it a grand cause benefiting people in regional countries along the route. Over the past five years he has secured cooperation from a vast number of countries, as well as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). China will provide US$60 billion (more than N$886 billion) in support, including free aid, loans and special funds for Africa’s development, Xi said in Beijing.Also known as the Silk Road Initiative, Xi’s modern Belt and Road Initiative was first thought to focus only on Asian and European links. With the “String of Pearls” port upgrade strategy being implemented simultaneously, the Belt and Road Initiative, for Africa, has come to encompass China’s quest to reliably extract the continental hinterland’s natural resources and pioneer cross-continental access routes, according to the Stanford Law School. Silk RoadThe ancient Silk Road was originally established when the Han Dynasty in China officially opened trade with the West in 130 B.C. Its routes remained in use until 1453 A.D., according to history.com. The Silk Road routes included a large network of strategically located trading posts, markets and thoroughfares designed to streamline the transport, exchange, distribution and storage of goods. The Silk Road, from its opening to its closure, had so great an impact on the development of world civilisation that it is difficult to imagine the modern world without it, according to the Ancient History Encyclopedia. Our turnGeingob’s signing of the MoU ahead of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China Africa Cooperation (Focac) follows China recognising Namibia as a bilateral partner in a comprehensive strategic and cooperative partnership in March, according to China’s foreign ministry. The Chinese foreign ministry says Xi was happy that consensus agreements reached were being implemented in an orderly manner.At the occasion the Chinese premier said the two sides should understand and support each other on issues involving respective core interests and major concerns. Both sides should better align strategies, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation and strengthen people-to-people exchanges, while promoting infrastructure construction and production capacity cooperation.Geingob said the two sides have been working together for a long time and that the upgrade of relations status benefits both countries. He sees the Belt and Road Initiative as beneficial to connectivity between Asian, African and European countries, as well as industrialisation in Africa.Namibia and ChinaNamibia’s gross domestic product stood at US$10.27 billion in 2016. The country’s population was estimated at 2.48 million in 2016 and its landmass is 825 615 km². Although classified as a middle-income country, poverty is widespread and much of the population is excluded from the formal economy. Namibia's Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, now stands at 0.572.China’s GDP in 2016 was US$11.2 trillion. That year the country population stood at 1.379 billion while the landmass of China is 9.597 million km². In 2016, China’s Gini coefficient was 0.47. A lower Gini coefficient indicates less inequality.Working togetherChina has been Africa's largest trading partner for nine years in a row. In 2017, China's trade with Africa surged 14% year on year to US$170 billion. The fast growth continued into the first half of 2018 when the trade volume jumped 16% to nearly US$100 billion.Details of the specifics of the MoU signed between Geingob and Xi are still unclear, but China’s commitment to helping Namibian transport and infrastructure ambitions is clear. By June this year the Stanford Law School (SLS) China Guiding Cases Project already listed Namibia as one of the 101 “Belt and Road Countries” it had identified.SLS says: “The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiatives (official English short name: The Belt and Road) run across the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa, connecting East Asia’s growing markets at one end with Europe’s developed economies at the other, and everything in between. Confirming the involvement of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in October 2013, China has since reached consensus on the project with multiple countries along the historical route. However, the vision is not limited by geography, as any country interested in the initiatives part of the Belt and Road is welcome to participate.” On 28 March 28 2015, China’s National Development and Reform Commission, ministry of foreign affairs and ministry of commerce jointly released an action plan on the principles, framework, and cooperation priorities and mechanisms in the Belt and Road Initiative, setting forth the foundation for the initiative that promises to change the face of the world.Since then many more specific plans have sprouted from cooperation with a host of different countries - from France to Greece, Malaysia to the Kingdom of Cambodia, Russia to Saudi Arabia and Djibouti en Ethiopia. One such plan includes the Belt and Road Customs Clearance Cooperation Action Plan (2018-2020) aiming to enhance customs co-ordination and liaison between China and the Belt and Road routes, and supporting cross-border economic cooperation zones.The UNDP has welcomed the Chinese expansionary initiative, saying it aims to link different regions through infrastructure construction, transport and economic corridors and by bridging China with the rest of the world both physically, financially, digitally and socially. In April, the first high-level meeting of the UNDP-China Joint Working Group took place to compile a list of projects that will be recognised as deliverables of the UNDP-Government of China cooperation and presented officially at the upcoming Belt and Road Forum in 2019.Roads in ZambiaShortly after the September summit, Zambia launched a China-funded mega-road project. The road will connect the southern and central parts of the country to the mining towns in the Copperbelt province. The construction of the 321-kilometer Lusaka-Ndola dual carriageway, including the bypass roads in Kabwe and Kapiri Mposhi, and 45 kilometers of the Luanshya-Fisenge-Masangano Road will be done by China Jiangxi Corporation for International Economic and Technical Cooperation (CJIC) at a cost of US$1.2 billion, a loan from China's Exim Bank. The road, to be constructed in four years, will create over 3 000 jobs for local people, according to Chinese state media.Rail in AngolaAs part of its extremely ambitious long-term plan to connect the Atlantic and Indian oceans by rail, the China Railway Construction Corporation Limited recently completed its Lobito-Luau line, a 1 344 km rail-line that goes right up to Angola's border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The long-term goal is for Lobito-Luau to link up with the Angola-Zambia and the Tanzania-Zambia railways, thus connecting two of the world's three most important oceans by rail. Spanning 67 stops and 42 bridges, Angola's fastest line broke ground in 2004 and was completed in 2015. Running parallel to the original Benguela line first built by the Portuguese in 1912, it marks the reconnecting of the country's far-east with Huambo, Angola's second largest city.Sea ports in NamibiaChina Harbour Engineering Company is building a new container terminal and an oil jetty at the port of Walvis Bay, which both lie at the heart of the country's ambition to become a logistic hub in the Southern African region. Expected to be completed by the end of this year, the port project will see throughput capacity of the port's container terminals more than double to 750 000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) per year. It will also add the first government-controlled oil storage facility in Namibia, and a cruise jetty to boost tourism. The project entails 40 hectares of land reclaimed from the sea and the installation of four 80-meter-high ship-to-shore container cranes. Walvis Bay is set to become a shiny addition to China’s “String of Pearls” harbour upgrade projects scattered all over the world.

Belt, Road and a Pearl from China

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