Sat, 25 Mar 2017 09:41:57 +0000
FOR those unfamiliar with the chequered history of Southern Africa, they may be forgiven to think that the Great People’s Republic of China is interested in Zambia today because of its potential for foreign direct investment and the reward of massive profits to be gained by such investors.
What they may not know is that China is reaping the rewards of more than 50 years of true and patient friendship, political comradeship and bilateral economic relations with Zambia dating back to the tumultuous years of the indomitable Chinese revolutionary and father-figure Chairman Mao tse Tung and his bonding with Zambia’s independence hero Kenneth Kaunda.
Chairman Mao, as founder of modern China, headed the world’s most populous nation through one of its most bitter and unforgettable history of the Cultural Revolution, formally the ‘’Great Proletarian Revolution’’, which was widely admired and revered by the peoples of Africa and the Third World.
It was from these humble beginnings of the agricultural and socio-political movement that the Chinese people forged the iron will and resolve of steel that has made China rise from the ashes of communist ideology to become the world’s economic and military Superpower it is today.
Despite its ideological ups and downs, China never forgot its commitment to the friendship and diplomatic relations it had forged with the people of that little, copper-rich state in the womb of Africa at a time it was surrounded and threatened by the belligerent racist regimes in Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa and the Portuguese colonialists in Mozambique and Angola.
China, the true and all-weather friend, agreed to help Zambia out of the economic stranglehold of Rhodesia and South Africa amid the patronising, deliberate ambiguity of the former colonial power Britain, by building TAZARA and TAZAMA, two multi-billion dollar projects which the West at the time deemed technically impossible, and at best, economically wasteful.
The Chinese government ignored Western pessimism and ridicule and proved to the world that they had a unique school of engineers who could deliver the two projects despite the massive cost, the incredible distance and the complexity of the railway and oil pipeline.
With Zambia’s imports and exports diverted to the north, Zambia was now in a position to successfully prosecute the liberation war that led to the independence of Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and finally the surrender of apartheid in South Africa.
In other words the independence of these countries was underwritten and forged in the iron-clad relationship between China and Zambia.
Since then China has invested massively in Zambia’s infrastructure – roads, bridges and business. The almost K3 trillion Mongu-Kalabo road, Africa’s most expensive road project and one of the world’s technological wonders, is one of China’s practical demonstrations to the legacy of its warm, fraternal relations with Zambia, which are not bonded in money and benefit but the will to help a friend in need.
It is for this reason that President Edgar Lungu was yesterday moved to speak to warmly and candidly about Chinese investment and the role it has played to grow Zambia’s economy. Truly, Chinese efforts to develop Zambia are ‘‘visible for all to see’’.
Welcoming visiting chairman of the Bank of China to State House, President Lungu paid glowing tribute to the cordial and long-standing relationship between Zambia and China that has existed since 1964 and hoped that this unique friendship and economic cooperation would continue to grow for the benefit of the two countries.
It is no doubt the Bank of China, that has been in Zambia since 1997, which has bank-rolled the huge and costly projects that have characterized the Patriotic Front government’s development agenda of the last five years.
As we look forward to a ‘‘deepened’’ economic and bilateral cooperation between China and Zambia, as promised by the Bank of China chairman, this relationship is bonded in the blood and sweat of Chinese crews who died during the construction of TAZARA and TAZAMA and the many other early projects which are the foundation of the Zambian economy.
China is a friend indeed.
