What Africa Can Learn About China's Urbanization

[@chinaglobalsouth]

Read the Article by Astrid R.N. Haas - African Urbanization: What Can (and Can’t) Be Learned From China About Growing Cities - rb.gy/uhn7if

[@ShangguanJiewen]

Wonderful conversation on China-Africa. I study this too from Beijing as an American.

[@Tony-dv5fs]

Great conversation, we need a part 2!

[@cannonfodder4376]

Gonna have to read the article later but a most informative discussion you two. I don't think I would encounter such a nuanced discussion with perspectives about urbanization in Africa that don't view things from a western perspective.

[@Pecs8026]

So smart lady

[@lagrangewei]

how much access do african scholar have with the government?

[@ruifenghuang1029]

China+HK holds 1 trillion US treasury, those capitals are just parked there and keeps accumulating. Now China want to park some in other places such as infrastructure in HSR, urbanization, EV public charging, green technology, coal plants, electric grid, etc. These can't absorb the excess so some are parked in other currency reserves, resource reserves (oil, food, etc). And then it is investment in BRI/foreign infrastructure. They are loans so there is expectation of recoupment, but China isn't as hard on it because it is trade surplus and would have went into UST. Either way they are just investment from trade surplus, some do very well like HSR network, EV station, some are mix bag like BRI ($1 trillion in BRI is roughly equal to cost of entire HSR network), some are bad like phase 1 of the China chip big fund (Chip Act for China). Overall, the human quality of life improvement probably dwarves parking money in UST. If a BRI project get a lot of bad press, people there don't like it, it is not well maintained, overall quality of life doesn't change, and China can't collect the loan back, reasonable investor will just stop giving loan in that project. Purely non educated guess for why don't China put $2 trillion in HSR is that money can only make the investment efficient up to a point, if too much money is given then the corruption problem will lower the efficiency. Phase one of China big fund is an example

[@mateusmahumane8990]

I think China can learn something from Africa, especially allowing the mushrooming of shanty towns.

[@MAdams-ey4if]

Not sure you can point to "what Africa does right" when the level of Outward Bound youth and skilled people, combined with the complete lack of country wide electricity, water and sewage infrastructure, and it's hard to say what we in Africa are doing right. .... Absoluely! "Transparent Land Management Protocols". Without a widely recognized administrative law and civil procedure, rules and regulations, you will never unlock the value of the land. A lot of "stakeholders" in Africa that become easy targets for Western manipulation.

[@KonglengLee-t6l]

Just dont be like india for sure