Prof. YU Miaojie with ISSCAD students
9th November, 2016, Prof. YU Miaojie, the Deputy Dean of National School of Development (NSD), Peking University who also doubles as the Deputy Director of China Centre for Economic Research (CCER) delivered a lecture titled “China’s Growing Role in Globalization: Trade and Investment” at Wanzhong Building, Langrun Garden of NSD. At the workshop are students -mostly from developing countries- of the Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development (ISSCAD).
Prof. Miaojie analysed what he described as “The China Miracle” and supported his points with convincing statistics. He noted that in 1978, China’s GDP was about 364billion RMB but as a result of opening up and the experimental adoption of market oriented policies, China’s economy is now the 2nd largest in the world with GDP of US$10.4tr (around 2/3rd of United States of America GDP) with GDP per capital of $7,900 in 2015. Speaking on China’s trade, he submitted that China is the largest trading country in the world, describing China as the locomotive of world economic growth.
To put in proper perspective, Prof. Miaojie highlighted that Africa–China bilateral trade increased from US$1.2million in 1950 to US$178 billion in 2015 and reiterated that China became the largest trading partner of Africa in 2008. He also noted that the form of China’s trade with Africa has transited from primary products to machinery, transport equipment and high-tech products. He also stated that China’s Foreign Direct Investment to Africa currently stands at about $10bn and around 2,000 Chinese firms invested in Africa as at 2015 with investments in about 51 nations in Africa, registering 85% coverage ratio of countries in the continent.
He, however, made it known that Africa-China bilateral trade has been growing over the years with economic cooperation now transiting beyond trade and investment, incorporating other strategic sectors as a means of creating jobs and reducing poverty in Africa. Advising participants and recommending policies for African governments, he observed that for a country to develop economically, it must promote processing trade, institute policies that will facilitate inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and adopt pragmatic exchange rate regime. “Human capital must be developed and worker training must be prioritized to boost firm’s productivity”, Prof. Miaojie noted. Without these, he regretted that poverty will still be visible inspite of the continents enormous potentials.
He finally stressed the importance of well-designed Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in line with countries comparative advantage, calling it a major factor that led to China’s economic transformation and that Africa can also witness similar economic prosperity if developmental policies are rightly adopted and implemented.
