NN40, May 2008
Education for Sustainable Development? Or The Sustainability of Education Investment? A Special Issue
Education and Sustainable Growth in Africa: Following the Path of a Beijing Consensus?
By Bjorn H. Nordtveit, University of Hong Kong
Email: bjorn@hkucc.hku.hk and bnordtveit@hotmail.comKeywords
China, Education, Growth, Development
Summary
This paper examines the relationship between education, growth and development, using the debate on China?s cooperation with Africa as a case study.
Introduction
Most development projects adhere to some form of modernization theory, in which development is almost synonymous with economic growth. Education is considered as an ingredient to drive this growth. In the 1980s and subsequent to Reagan?s definition of the state as being a ?part of the problem?, a purified marked-based version of the growth paradigm was established and known under the term ?Washington Consensus?. In 1987 the term ?sustainable? was introduced into the development discourse by the Brundtland report, favoring ecologically sound growth. The notion of sustainability was adopted by most development agencies, and was also incorporated into the neoliberal discourse. The ultimate goal of development, of course, was still seen as economic growth, often while paying lip services to the term ?sustainable?.
China?s discourse on a market-based ?socialism with Chinese characteristics?, its economic growth, and the recent expansion of its Africa cooperation have led to growing interest on China-Africa relations and to a questioning of whether the China-proposed model is different from the Western growth-based paradigm. This paper examines the relationship between education, growth and development, using the debate on China?s cooperation with Africa as a case study.
Towards a ?Beijing Consensus??
A cooperation forum between China and Africa in Beijing in November 2006 received unprecedented media attention because of China?s new aid pledges to Africa. The aid is aimed at capacity building and technology expertise transfer in agriculture, medical, health and educational areas. Accordingly, the Chinese Government plans to increase the training of African specialists in various fields from 10,000 in the 2004-06 period to 15,000 in the following three years. The aid package includes assistance to African countries to set up one hundred schools; a pledge to increase the number of scholarships given to African students to study in China from 2,000 to 4,000 per year by 2009, as well as an offer of training to educational officials and heads of leading educational institutions.
China?s own economic success and its development engagement with African nations have led many observers to question whether there is a Chinese model for development, a ?Beijing Consensus?. This development strategy is, according to Joshua Ramo of the Foreign Policy Centre (who coined the term of ?Beijing Consensus?), based on three pillars, which include innovation- and knowledge-led growth, a focus on the quality of life (instead of economic performance), and self-determination. It is difficult to consider China as a bilateral donor without considering it as the diffuser of a development model along the lines of such ?Beijing Consensus? because of its tremendous success in economic development. One of the means China may use to propagate its development views is through the International Poverty Reduction Centre in China (IPRCC), a 2005 joint government and UNDP initiative which has as its aim to gather and distribute lessons on poverty reduction in China and internationally.
Whereas most international observers welcome China?s accelerated engagement with Africa, others have pointed out that there are also grounds for caution. Concerns about the Chinese cooperation with Africa are related to China?s policy of ?non-interference? in local affairs and hence its dealings with a number of leaders who have been criticized for human rights abuses, environmental destruction and large-scale corruption. Further, China?s education cooperation with Africa has been criticized for merely being a part of a larger strategy to obtain access to African resources, and especially oil. However, in many ways China?s approach is not very different from the aid offered by Western states, which also promote their own economic concerns through development and investment packages to poor countries.
China as an unsustainable model
Capitalist privatization and economic development in a totalitarian setting has proved to be a mix leading China to a possible ecological disaster. In rural areas, land degradation affects more than half of the country?s pastures and this has direct adverse consequences for 400 million people, whereas soil erosion may impact as much as one-third of China's total land area. Mao had attempted to create a very equal society in China and this was reflected by the Gini coefficient, which decreased from 0.33 in 1930s to about 0.16 in 1980, before rising to 0.45 in 2004 as an effect of the new economic policies. Currently, both ethnic and geographical inequalities are on the rise and can be discerned as potential sources of future conflict. I would contend, therefore, that China's much-hailed economic policies has (at least) two major drawbacks - destruction of the environment and the growth of a society with a huge disparity in economic terms. Both these issues have the potential to fester with alarming consequences. Implicit in this scenario is the debate as to which extent should these policies should be emulated elsewhere and indeed whether at all Africa would wish to follow the same path.
Similarly, in the field of education, it seems that China may not have much to offer as a model of development. China spends less of its GDP on education than most other countries: its target for 2007 was 4% of GDP. Current statistics puts the expenditure on education even lower, at less than 3% (2.82% according to People's Daily, January 2007). This is largely due to the introduction of user fees at all levels of education. Also, Chinese education, since Deng Xiaoping's opening speech at the National Conference on Education in Beijing in April 1978, appears to emulate Western education in its focus on an education system that is ironically at the service of the economy. In general, the Chinese education system can be characterized by the uneasy cohabitation of emphasis on expertise and modernity (leading to economic growth) as well as on social control and politics. Indeed, it can be said that the Chinese education system serves a dual purpose of creating capitalist uncritical economic development and at the same time preserving an undemocratic and politically frozen society. It is likely that this incongruence between of political control and modernity may prove to be a recipe for social unrest in the future. As an example or model of educational structure, its usefulness for Africa may be very limited.
Conclusion
China is increasingly involved in the education, growth and development discourse. For example, in 2005 it gathered African education ministers to sign a Beijing declaration on cooperation in education, and on education as a human right. Teachers from China are being dispatched to Africa and schools constructed, though within China education remains low on the domestic priority list. These apparent contradictions of China's engagements with African education remain largely unstudied. Further, when analysing China?s engagement with Africa (and the possibility of a Chinese model, a ?Beijing Consensus?), it is important to nuance China?s great economic achievement and its failure in environmental protection and in creating equal development, so as to avoid an indiscriminate export of Chinese education and development programs to Africa. Maybe it is time to find an African model for Africa?
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