Yes, the West has gone bust, but how safe is this look-East policy?

Britannia ruled the waves in the 19th century America held the top spot in the 20th. As for the 21st, ask anyone with bona fides in punditry and they will tell you that it is China’s.

The West has gone bust, European currency is faltering, their military is shrinking, and America’s confidence is shaken.

The south of Europe is being ripped apart at the seams by financial austerity while America, the shining beacon between two seas, has stagnated in the ghoulish muck of partisan democracy. Exit the West, enter the dragon.

Last week, an article in the foreign pages of this newspaper said that the world might soon have to consider the renminbi as a global reserve currency alternative to the dollar. China is the success story of our times.

The speed with which it has lifted its people out of absolute poverty, hunger, and want is perhaps unequalled. Soon it will have the world’s largest economy.  The future is not only made in China, it is China’s. Or is it?

Kenya has been cosying up to China, hoping to ride the wave to prosperity. We have a Confucius institute, airport terminals from China, a Chinese-built superhighway, and soon, a super railway from Beijing.

We recently signed 17 trade deals with China that will further strengthen the ties between our countries. But, as my colleague Eunice Kilonzo says, you should not learn Mandarin just yet.

As China goes from rural to urban, there is increasing pressure on agricultural land. Whole villages, along with farming land, are being gentrified into high-rise metropolises.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), China has one of the worst arable land-to-population ratios, well below world average.

Adopting GM crops can only get you so far; you actually need land at some point. When you have that many people, feeding them is a great concern.
Ecological disasters

China values hydrologists more than any other country and has even had one as president (Hu Jintao.) However, its continued hyper-extraction of water from its rivers has led to ecological disasters and extinction of species.

Excessive use of Mongolian coal has made the air in many places unbreathable. It has territorial disputes with India, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Its only real ally, North Korea, is more of an anchor than a buoy.

China fought to maintain North Korea during the 1950s war of the Korean Peninsula, and now it must maintain the hellhole as a buffer between it and the American forces stationed at the 38th parallel. The precarious state that North Korea is in means that China should always be ready to inherit a half-dead country with nukes at short notice.   

Now, to its greatest asset: Its population. China has no social safety net for its citizens. In societies without welfare, people usually have many children as insurance for old age. China, in its wisdom, limited the number of children you could have to one. Many people will have no one to look after them when they are old.

A while back, the country passed a law requiring people to visit their parents occasionally. The one-child policy means that the working population will fall, and continue falling, by more than an arithmetic progression in the coming years. The working population will also grey faster than expected.

Besides, other countries along the Mekong River like Vietnam and Cambodia have cheaper worker rates. Smartphone companies are moving south to exploit this. The undercutters are being undercut.

China is trying to bridge this by using child labour to make electronics, as reported by the United Kingdom’s The Guardian newspaper last year. Beijing is losing its advantage.

As for the workers, companies put nets outside the windows of some of their largest factories because there are so many jumpers. Labour conditions are inhospitable.

Besides, the greying of society will mean that China’s median age will probably shoot up faster than any other society not at war. They will soon have a top-heavy age pyramid, with no method to a young working base to support them.

That they are losing their unique selling point is not the greatest worry caused by the short-sighted, one-child policy. The policy also made parents value boys more than girls.

By some estimates, the country has 70 million more men than women. Surplus men are usually disaffected and end up being a problem to stability.

This brings me to the reason China is investing so heavily outside its borders. After the Asian financial crash of 1997, China started hoarding dollars to insulate the economy from financial shocks caused by heavy reliance on foreign investment in securities.

The opportunity cost of loaning Kenya money is developing western China. This means that, outside the gigantic cities, many rural Chinese lack government services.

Per capita income shows that China is still a lower middle-income country. It does not rank among the top 80 richest countries. If you were to consider its earning per person, China would simply be Namibia with nukes.

Buying influence abroad

Beijing is getting foreign infrastructure at the cost of building it at home. China cannot really afford to loan us that money. Its rural areas lack schools and hospitals. Such a system can only breed resentment. Why build superhighways in the savannah when some people lack hospitals at home?  

China should be using this money to develop the western part of the country, not eastern Africa. It is buying influence abroad at the cost of setting up infrastructure at home.

It is also not a democracy; the country is ruled by a cabal of party appointees with near-absolute powers. The people live in a one-party state and are powerless against the might of the state. Yet humans, wherever they are, yearn for freedom more than anything else.

China cannot export its values of “know your place” and one-party rule. India has proved that a billion-plus democracy is achievable at around the same time China re-invented itself.

China has a mesh of problems from which it will be difficult to extricate itself before it can offer leadership to the world. It is not that China is the Titanic and headed for several ice floes; it is more like the Hindenburg, a more imminent and combustible disaster waiting to happen.

By any political, cultural, or military measure, China will never dominate our future or the future of our world. It is more likely that China will further bow to democratic ideals or collapse under the weight of its unsustainable system than that the country’s one-party ideals will be exported around the world.

We also live in a world created by the West, and one which will continue to be dominated by the West for the rest of this century.

The West is still best if you consider that it is the richest, strongest, and most inventive. China may be the second largest economy (first in some books), but Europe and America still generate most of the world’s wealth. China is stuck as a client state wholly reliant on selling manufactured products to Americans, whom it loans money.  

The world yearns to achieve ideas, principles, and living standards that were created in Europe. Our aspiration, shelter, clothing, finance, and society were all invented in the West. Even the way I organise words in my head is from the West.

The future may be built in China, but it will be imagined, conceived, and improved by Western thinking. Our hope is to be less like China and more like the West.

The Economist Intelligent Unit projects that 30 years into the future, the top two cities that attract the most talent and money will still be the ones that form the pact of Atlanticism. The world is still going to be tilted towards the London-New York axis.

Our future and security is underwritten by America and Britain. Kenya should face West because it would be better off being more like Britain and America than China.

Is he right? Send your reactions to [email protected]. Email the writer at [email protected]