BOOK LAUNCH| Fay Chung’s “Zimbabwe Looking East”

Coalition partners ideologically oscillated between the polar extremes of the modern world – the East represented by China, and the West represented by Europe and the US. 

With Zanu-PF’s decisive electoral victory in 2013, the Look East policy was once again foregrounded on the party’s roadmap to economic recovery.

The policy looks even more pertinent at a time when China’s global ascendancy concurs with the marked decline of the post-2008 Western capitalist establishment.

 However, Zimbabwe’s former Minister of State for Employment Creation, Fay Chung, is waving down a flag for the country to pause and calculate what is there for it in the East.

Chung, an educationist of Chinese descent, recently published a book called “Zimbabwe Looking East” to determine the efficacy of the policy and to explore further possibilities from the current matrix.

To look or not to look is, however, less than the question. 

Xinhua news agency director Xu Lingui, who was a panellist at the launch of Chung’s book in Harare last week, pointed out that it is possible to miss it when the emphasis is just on looking and not studying it critically.

“Zimbabwe Looking East” is not so much about how much Zimbabwe can benefit by riding on the coattails of the Asian giant but how it can appropriate lessons from the rise of China for homegrown development.

At the outset of the book, Chung commends the Look East policy as a politically astute move by President Mugabe at the high tide of the antagonisation of Zimbabwe by the West over the land reform programme. 

She, however, maintains that while it is prudent to look East, Zimbabwe must regard China not as a source but as a model for its own economic turnaround.

Neither East nor West but to internal drivers is, ultimately, Chung’s loud and clear challenge for Zimbabwe.

“It is totally unsound to expect development to come from the East or from the West. Development will come from internal drivers,” she declares. 

At the moment, Zimbabwe’s industries are on a downward incline; neither sustaining jobs nor competing internationally.

The country regressed from an industrialising economy to become dependent on primary production, chiefly agriculture and mineral resources, during the same time when China stepped ahead from behind. 

However, having paid the painful cost of resource nationalism over the past 15 years, Zimbabwe can now utilise the reclamation of its immense natural wealth for industrial expansion.

Chung suggests that this can be accomplished in partnership with friendly countries, particularly China, who should be able to cede technology and administrative expertise and facilitate markets for Zimbabwean products. 

The difference between Zimbabwe’s relationship with the West and the East, is that the former was more inclined to aid, and is generally scaling down, while the latter insists on trade.

The opposition campaign mantra which has long revolved around holding the key to the donor chest is anachronistic and due for a reality check in this regard. 

To step out of the swaddling bands of chronic dependency on aid, Zimbabwe needs to put its best foot forward, to demand technology and expertise in return for its resources.

“Until and unless Zimbabwe uses what little resources it has more judiciously for developmental purposes rather than for short-term political support, it will fail to develop,” warns Chung.

Chung dares Zimbabwe to dream wild and free as economic success in the Asian order is achievable but stresses long-term economic planning as opposed to populist tangents.

No mean feat to dare this much, noting that China is poised to be the next if, not the now, global economic powerhouse, while Zimbabwe has not been its best in recent years. 

However, the fact that China managed to defrock its sleeping giant tag and stride to the economic forefront, beginning around the same time Zimbabwe attained its Independence, demonstrates that a similar changeover is attainable here.

The vast population gap factored, and a custom scale anticipated, Zimbabwe’s economy will soar when it weans itself of donor dependency and goes not just for the money but also for the tools.

Chung advocates this Asian model of development, whereby Zimbabwe can beneficiate its resources, maximise productivity and guarantee its best interest at the international counter by transplanting modern technology and production systems from the East, and even the West.

While China’s 1,3 billion-strong population has been instrumental in its economic accession, this needs not to be a shroud of impossibility as Zimbabwe looks East for a miracle model.

It is pertinent to observe that Japan and the Asian tigers, comprising Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong, have also successfully executed the Asian model.

Chung, however, notes that Zimbabwe, like many African countries with small populations, cannot significantly industrialise based on domestic needs alone. 

Rather, there must be practical emphasis on regional synergies such as Sadc, which has a collective population of over 200 million. Enhancing trade within SADC and the African Union is apparently material for effortless rhetoric at the moment.

However, if pursued in earnest, it will not only shield African countries who are getting less than their resources’ worth – 10 percent, in most cases – from exploitation by former colonisers, but also facilitate innovation, provide varied solutions and grow one of the world’s most strategic marketplaces.

Chung makes a comparative analysis of the Western and Eastern development models and emphasises that Zimbabwe’s peculiar realities rule out an indiscriminate transplant of either model. 

Rather, the country can appropriate the best of both worlds, with particular emphasis on the more pragmatic and human-centred tendencies.

The West’s neo-liberal prescriptions failed Zimbabwe in the 1990s when Zimbabwe pursued structural adjustment beginning 1990.

Official renunciation of this path in 1996 did not significantly reverse the huge class disparities which had set in, with ministers servicing the disenfranchised electorate with revolutionary ear candy, while a number of them have been bent to self-enrichment ever since.

Such deception has a parallel in the US, where elections are bankrolled by capitalist interests and the masses hoodwinked by campaigns which are just superficial fronts for a money-minded minority. 

The few positive lessons from the US include its commitment to maintaining a high standard of living for its citizens and its enabling climate for world-class innovation.

China also provides a masterclass in innovation and entrepreneurship. Chung observes that China’s export-oriented outlook makes it possible for government and established businesses to provide infrastructural, technological and managerial support for promising start-ups.

This would be ideal for Zimbabwe where a highly educated young population, currently struggling to be accommodated by the formal sector, can be encouraged to go the start-up route and to grow jobs instead of waiting on the limited space for miracles. 

China also provides a pertinent lesson in that it unequivocally outlaws corruption as economic sabotage whereas Zimbabwe entertains many posh euphemisms for this basest of vices.

Corruption, let it be said, has assumed a default Zimbabwean citizenship with money-hungry leaders among the primary beneficiaries. 

Lack of will to fight corruption is Zimbabwe’s greatest undoing, an unacceptable rip-off by a political elite which has the audacity to eat into our generation instead of working for sustainable economic development.

China provides a refreshing contrast in this regard with a merit-based and highly disciplined leadership and workforce which places due premium on national interest. 

Another important lesson from China is government’s commitment to funding research and close partnership with intellectuals for the country’s development.

China has also been able to get the majority of its citizens out of poverty and sustains effort to bridge the urban-rural gap.

The negative lessons from China include its one-party system, exploitation of its vast population as a cheap source of labour for foreign capitalists, and largely unchecked industrial pressure on the environment. 

Chung will have to correct minor factual errors in subsequent editions of her book. In one instance, she erroneously says that Theodore Roosevelt served two US presidential terms from 1933 to 1941.

As a matter of fact, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died during his fourth term, served from 1933 to 1945. Theodore, an earlier president, was in office from 1901 to 1909. 

“Zimbabwe Looking East” is, on the whole, one of the most important books published this year. The intelligent commentary is a welcome departure from the shrill personality politics we are inundated with from every side.