I recently had the privilege to form fleeting impressions of China during two working visits to Beijing.  Some of the impressions confirmed what I already knew from two decades looking at the China-Africa engagement.  Others were unexpected and to some extent unsettling.          

On a hot summer day, it was a pleasure to admire the grandeur of The Temple of Heaven in Beijing.  The architecture, the craftmanship, the vivid colors, the scale of the buildings – all dating back to the fifteenth century.  Standing in the plaza facing the Temple, one’s mind is flooded with questions which are similar to those that occur while standing outside the Versailles Palace in France or the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, in Russia. 

The purpose of The Temple, a sacred place to pray for prosperity and good fortune, resonates with most Africans.  Here and there on the African continent, there were places reserved for identical purposes.  Few have survived Arab and European desecration.   This rupture of the link between a people and their Creator, and the attempt to interpose a new Creator, is one of the root causes of the turmoil on the continent, I suspect.  Embracing other people’s Creators has wreaked untold pain and suffering on the African continent for nearly two millennia. 

Like many Africans, I long for the Creator who singled out our lineage four and a half billion years ago, and honored it with prosperity and good fortune, season after season, so that I can stand in front of The Temple of Heaven in 2024.  Alas, the view of our Creator who presided over the emergence of Mankind somewhere on the African continent is increasingly hazy.

Around Kung’s Palace, I walked past many shops selling gifts to almost entirely Chinese customers.  Business is brisk. 

My untrained eye tells me that the people come from different regions of China.  Physical and facial differences cover the entire spectrum of China’s mosaic – from the northern reaches of Inner Mongolia to Guangxi in the south, from Xinjiang in the west to the eastern melting pot. 

Do such differences have economic, political or social consequences?  If so, to what extent?  Is there a pecking order?  Does a tourist from Tibet buy a gift with motifs that are prevalent in Guangzhou, for instance? Is it significant that my host always points out the regional origin of the cuisine of every restaurant where we stop for lunch or dinner?   

Why were such questions on my mind?  Because in many parts of Africa, the process of superseding ethnic identities and embracing a national identity has been a major hurdle in making nations.   Right from the first African contact with outsiders, be they Arabs or Europeans, ethnic differences have been exploited to the detriment of us, especially sub-Saharan Africans.  Could I learn something from China?  How deep is Chinese celebration of China’s cultural diversity?  How can it be duplicated?

Then there is Kung’s Palace itself.  It is a metaphor for opulence and extravagance and just a touch of corruption.  My tour guide informs me that those who indulged in these excesses were punished.  That seems like justice when the opulence of the palace is seen against the quality of life of a typical Chinese in 1780 when it was built. 

But it is the corruption behind the creation of Kung’s Palace that grabs the attention of an African. 

Concern with corruption takes up so much space in the African-Western engagement that it leaves the impression that it is endemic or even congenital among Africans.  The delivery of aid and loans has been distorted by measures which are designed to ensure that African officials do not divert resources.  Indeed, a common refrain in Western criticism of the China-Africa engagement is that Africans prefer working with China because the Chinese are more tolerant of corruption – a denigration of both Chinese and Africans.  These critics do not consider the possibility that Africans turn to China and others to escape the engagement with the West because it is soaked in motifs of colonization.   At times, the engagement is thinly veiled colonization.

Obviously, corruption slows down modernization and entrenches inequalities.  But the steepest economic ascent of today’s advanced economies was accompanied by corruption and allied ills such as crimes against humanity on a scale that has yet to be duplicated anywhere in Africa.  In our time, to blame corruption for low levels of modernization in Africa, as Western analysts do, is the height of hypocrisy.    

Like the Great Wall in the past, Tiananmen Square announces China to the world.   It is popular with Chinese tourists.  They come from the far corners of the country to enjoy this national symbol.  Yet, as I joined in taking pictures in Tiananmen Square, I was struck by the relative youth of the people and the symbols that they carried with them.    

A group of uniformly very tall young men sported T-shirts with the logos of leading American basketball teams.  Here and there, young women in their threadbare designer blue jeans had handbags with the trademarks of leading fashion houses in France, Italy or the United States. 

The T-shirts, handbags and threadbare blue jeans are Western contributions to a certain kind of modernity in our interconnected world.  Yet, I felt moved to hope that even as they aspire to this modernity, the young Chinese will retain some symbols that are uniquely Chinese.  Analogously, I wish young Africans would retain uniquely African symbols as a contribution to a universal modernity.  Because, unless modernity celebrates all cultures, those who do not bring their symbols to this feast will always feel a bit alien.   

I joined families strolling past the faculty buildings of Peking University.  The parents are hoping that their sons and daughters will qualify to enter this, the first or second most prestigious university in China.

A young girl of perhaps eleven years detached herself from her family with clear nudging from her parents.  Her image in a tradition-inspired dress walking towards me in a manner I can only describe as regal is still vivid.  With precision she said to me, “Good afternoon.  I speak English.”  I was startled.  I mumbled something to encourage her to continue learning the English language.  But I wondered: Is that what China brings to universal modernity: dignity and courage?  Will Africa overturn a millennium of denigrating tropes to bring similar qualities to universal modernity?     

But these are first impressions.  They are subject to revisions as I continue to learn more about China.