The rise of China as a global power has a positive impact on its diplomatic and economic relations with countries in the Global South, according to President Paul Kagame.
Kagame said this on Saturday, December 7, at the 22nd edition of the Doha Forum in Qatar, where he took part in a panel discussion themed "China’s Role in a Rising Global South: Redefining the Future World Order.”
"China’s rising is a good thing,” said Kagame. "It&039;s rising maybe with others. So, how it conducts business is very important. How it relates and cooperates with other countries, most especially African countries, is a good thing.”
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Also on the panel were Namibia’s President Nangolo Mbumba, Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Motley, Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina Garcia, and Henry Wang, the president of the Center for China and Globalization, a think tank.
Kagame noted that China supported many African countries during their struggle for independence from colonialists.
"Now, the cooperation presents even more value in terms of trade and investment,” he said, highlighting that Rwanda benefited from China’s trade policies and recent removal of tariffs.
"For Rwanda, the value of trade we had with China rose from $35 million – it was a tiny amount – to $150 million. That speaks to the benefits from the measures that have been taken. I also imagine that other countries with bigger economies than Rwanda have benefited much more. So, that's a very good thing,” Kagame said.
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The President also said China’s relationship with African countries "doesn’t come with a lot strings attached, like we have had with many other parts of the world.”
"For China, for Africa, the relationship is beneficial and we’ve seen it numbers from one country to another,” said Kagame, adding that there were ongoing energy and healthcare infrastructure projects in Rwanda worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which are built with Chinese support.
‘China’s dept trap’
Speaking about what is often referred to as the Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, a perception that the Asian giant offers loans to poorer countries to increase its influence on them, Kagame said that that is was based on "prejudice.”
"That should not be blamed on China – much as it could take part of the blame for that – but Africans also need to do better in engagement with our partners, in this case China. We could take loans that we will to deploy to projects that are going to give good returns both ways,” he said.
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"But I have seen that China is making improvement in terms of approach to how they engage Africa, especially on these projects. They are targeting projects, not the kind of very projects that consume a lot of money and are not well implemented and cause problems. That’s where the governance part comes in.
"Governance is about getting things right, targeting the right people, the right places and getting the returns that you wanted from the beginning,” he said.
"We don’t see anything in history that suggests that China has misused its strength,” Kagame said, adding that cooperation with the Asian country made everyone feel that they are winning.
For Namibia’s President Mbumba, China is not only a source of investment for African countries, with its 1.4 billion people, the Asian giant also offers a vast market to African produce.
Mbumba said China’s way of doing business with other countries was based on mutual understanding, and it supported the countries to build critical infrastructure which would not be built by other countries.
"Which European company, British, Italian or German company, is going to come and build a road in Africa. They are doing other things. They are [invested] in highly sophisticated items.” Mbumba said.
"But the Chinese have companies that can do the dirt work, cleaning up things, building roads, opening up mines. So, our cooperation is based on political and cultural understanding of one another,” the Namibian leader said, adding that African countries were open to doing business with anyone who wanted to trade openly.
‘The birth pangs of a new world order’
For Motley, the current world order based on the United Nations is "dying” and the world is witnessing "the birth pangs of a new world order,” with the creation of multilateral organisations such the BRICS, a growing alliance led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, with more countries seeking to be part of it.
"The United Nations system was formed when most of the countries of the world were not sovereign entities. And whether we like it or not, it cannot reflect a true representation of the world's current realities,” the Barbadian leader said.
"BRICS is an expression, economically, of the fact that 80 per cent of the Global South wants to have a voice of economic self-determination with respect to their futures,” she said.
"Similarly, if we don't reflect that kind of inclusive approach within the United Nation system, the UN will become less and less relevant to the realities of the people of this world.”
Kagame said the before global order can be realised, there should be global stability in first place, "which we don’t have.”
The Rwandan leader said new formations like the BRICS "are coming up as a result of the fact that there is no global stability in the sense that the balance is in favour of the Global North.”
"We also need to realize that there's a lot we can do that benefits us in the Global South,” Kagame said.
"But we need to work together and after that we can even gain more by having the Global South cooperate with the Global North.”
Noting that the Global North had "not been favorable to the kind of cooperation that creates that stability,” Kagame said the BRICS alliance would "act as a check to the limitless use of power and means that the North has.”
"Maybe it moves all of us to that stability we are looking for,” Kagame said.