Chinese Modernization Means Opportunities
By Chu Maoming, China’s Consul General in Lagos
2022-10-30 23:40



Nigerian newspapers Vanguard, Punch, the Sun, This Day, Lagos City Reporters and so on, published an article written by Consul General of China in Lagos H.E. Chu Maoming, with the theme of Chinese Modernization Means Opportunities. The full text goes as follows:

The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), summarizing the great achievements over the first 10 years of the new era in China and at the same time, unveiling a blueprint for advancing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization, has just concluded in Beijing. “This has been a congress of holding our banner high, pooling our strength, and promoting solidarity and dedication”, President Xi Jinping, who’s also the re-elected General Secretary of the CPC’s central committee told the delegates at the Congress. President Xi also expressed China’s commitment to promoting the building of a human community with a shared future. “We will work with peoples of all other countries to champion humanity’s shared values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom to safeguard global peace and promote global development, and keep promoting the building of a human community with a shared future”, he said, noting that a prosperous China will create many more opportunities for the world.

Through over 40 years of relentless reform and opening up, China has created the twin miracles of fast economic growth and long-term social stability. The Chinese economy has great resilience and potential. Its strong fundamentals will not change, and it will remain on the positive trajectory over the long run. 

As the world economy is facing a tough situation this year, with probably tougher prospects for the next, China’s economic outlook carries global significance. China’s modernization stride will inject more certainty into the global economy.

Insights from the Chinese model of modernization are highly relevant to the global quest for alternate paths to modernization, and China’s success story can contribute to accelerating global human development and serve as an inspiration for other countries to map out their own plans for growth and for the international community to work for a better future. 

Over the past decade, China’s gross domestic product has come to account for 18.5 percent of the world economy. It has become a major trading partner for over 140 countries and regions, leading the world in total volume of trade in goods. Since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, China, which has managed to coordinate pandemic control and economic development, still maintains a stabilizer of the global supply and industrial chains, and is keeping driving the world economic recovery.

Chinese modernization contains elements common to the modernization processes of all countries, but more importantly, it features the Chinese context. It is the modernization of a huge population, of common prosperity for all, of material and cultural-ethical advancement, of harmony between humanity and nature and of peaceful development.

Chinese modernization will generate a positive impact in the global context. In 2021, China announced that after eight years of strenuous work between late 2012 and late 2020, the country had lifted the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents living under the current poverty line out of poverty, and removed all 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages from the poverty list. Now the country boasts the world’s biggest middle-income group -- 400 million people. That means huge potential for consumption. China’s consistent efforts to improve people’s living standards mean a significantly expanded middle-income group and upgraded consumption structure, which will offer more development opportunities for global enterprises.

From initiating the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank to taking the lead in implementing the UN sustainable development agenda, China has always been sharing its development dividends with the rest of the world.

China will accelerate creating a new development pattern and pursue high-quality development, according to the blueprint produced by the Congress. Obviously, China’s future development direction focus more on high-quality and sustainable development. This is good news for Nigeria and other countries throughout the world. For example, in the past few years, many Chinese companies have been involved in developing Nigeria’s digital economy in various of fields, which is exactly what Nigeria needs. China’s Huawei and ZTE have been building 5G network infrastructure in Nigeria for many years. OPay, one of Chinese fastest growing fin-tech companies in Nigeria, is providing consumers with a wide range of services including mobile payments and transfers. In 2019, OPay raised 120 million USD of series B funding, including several Chinese investors like Meituan-Dianping, DragonBall, GaoRong, Source Code, Redpoint China and so on. Currently, OPay has over 18 million registered app users in Nigeria who rely on its services to send and receive money, pay bills and many more. Egatee, a Chinese e-commerce start-up, is determined to consolidate main actors in the retail market in Nigeria, and to provide cross-border logistics, online payment and settlement and other whole process services. They are just a few examples of cooperation between Chinese companies and Nigerian companies. Definitely, with the participation of Chinese companies, it will help Nigeria’s economy to transform and upgrade, and enhance its competitiveness.