全球视野 | 中国经验对非洲工业化和城镇化的三个借鉴意义

近日，作者在国务院发展研究中心参加了中国国际发展知识中心“中英知识伙伴项目：中国城镇化发展经验及对非洲国家的借鉴意义”研讨会。会上，英国牛津大学非洲经济研究中心主任Stefan Dercon、英国国际增长研究中心城市经济学家Astrid Haas就非洲的工业化和城镇化问题分享了最新研究成果。作者作为中方专家之一分享了中国开发区建设和新经济发展的有关经验，主要包括三点：一是中国发展的工业化、城镇化、信息化、市场化、国际化等“五化”及政府的重要作用，二是研究与规划对开发区和城市发展的重要意义，三是中国的创业故事与创业服务体系建设经验对非洲发展高新技术产业的借鉴意义。

Thank you so much! It's been such a privilege to speak today.

I'd like to share from the perspective of a civil think tank and a private consultancy in China. My institute has grown up along with China's reform and opening-up together with our clients, a substantial part of whom have been the country's development zones as well as technology enterprises.

Ⅰ

The 5 “-izations” in China’s development

Today, Mr. Zhuo has introduced his brilliant summary of China’s urbanization process into the Triple “I”s – Industrialization, Infrastructure, and Internationality. Actually we have a similar summary of China’s development which is called the 5 “-izations”, namely Industrialization, Urbanization, Digitalization, Marketization, and Internationalization. These processes are closely interrelated with each other and cannot be very well tackled separately, as in the past decades, we have witnessed the process in which a piece of desolated land in the countryside became carrier of industries and eventually a new modern city. Today's topic of discussion is actually a very good reflection of these processes, as they takes place often with Special Economic Zones (SEZs) as the platform.

Chinese government has been doing a lot to make these changes happen, including institutional and legislative arrangements. China's development zones are mostly managed by government agencies that are specially created and apply special policies that serve the goal of industrial, economic and social development. This inevitably requires fundamental reform in the country's governing system. Legal guarantee is an assurance of consistent official support, so that the zones could do well in the long run as it normally takes decades to succeed. So the development of SEZs is an action of the state and requires national level determination, coordination and coherence of policies.

Ⅱ

The Importance of Research and Planning

While China’s experience has been discussed a lot, whether and how it can be applied to Africa remains a question, as Mr. Dercon today brings up the implications of new technologies for the GVC and Africa. I’d say it would be too arbitrary to simply say yes or no, but the importance of research and planning is what I can be sure of, and Ms. Haas also emphasized the importance of planning in urban development.

We know that Africa is a super diverse continent especially when applying SEZs to it. China is also very diverse. We have different kinds of SEZs, and no two zones are the same. We make specific designs for development zones based on what we call "Regional Characteristics" which involve an array of factors like its natural resources, labor and talent pool, traditional and existing industries, even social culture and so on. When there are many SEZs competing with each other, one must differentiate from others to stand out.

SEZs can hardly succeed without thorough planning. The question of whether a development zone could work well can to a large extent be answered by planning, including strategy planning, feasibility study, spatial design and urban construction planning, etc. These studies answer key questions for SEZ development, like, what industries to carry? What sector of market to target? Does it have necessary resources to support the industries? Etc. Although China is a late comer in developing SEZs, it is catching up quickly in regard to its expertise in SEZ planning, as a result of the country's successful development. Many agencies like us have been doing a lot domestically, and gradually going abroad.

Ⅲ

Leverage the Power of the New Economy

The third question is how African countries can take advantage of new technologies. I strongly disagree with the view that Africa cannot develop high-technology at current stage, because China started doing this exactly at the very early stage of reform and opening-up. China's industrialization is not just about merge into the world economy, but also about continuous technology innovation and application to develop the country’s own high-tech industries.

A significant part of China's story is the prosperity of the New Economy. Our topic today, digital economy, is exactly the most basic dimension of the new economy. Other new industries today like sharing economy, platform economy, and AI are all based on digital economy. The special value of new economy for developing countries lies in the chance to develop indigenously originated new industries. In China, new industries like mobile internet, AI, Fintech, new energy, etc. are now pioneering the globe, which was not imaginable 20 years ago. This became true in such a short time because the new economy has a feature of what we call "explosive growth". So developing countries can catch up very quickly in new economy, e.g. Southeast Asia also witnesses a boom of the Internet. The late comer advantage is much bigger in the new economy than traditional economy.

The way China developed New Economy is through entrepreneurship. China's reform and opening-up is also a process of entrepreneurship with waves after waves of entrepreneurs starting up businesses. Many well-known tech companies were created in the past decades, first by local scientists and researchers, and later by returned overseas Chinese entrepreneurs. Now every year in China there are over 5 million new startups, more than anywhere else in the world.

There's no doubt that entrepreneurship can make a difference in Africa too. I personally know some African entrepreneurs who live in Beijing. E.g. there is one from Eretria who studies here and is doing a startup about digital education that aims to make education more effective and more accessible in Africa. It is Africa entrepreneurs like this, instead of FDI, which really excite me and really bring big hope to the continent's future, because creativity and exploring spirit is the ultimate source of economic dynamism and sustainable development. A recent study shows that the number of Africa’s tech hubs grew dramatically in recent years, from 314 in 2016 to 442 in early 2018, which is a 50% growth, showing an increasing role innovation and entrepreneurship play in African economies.

In order to ignite this dynamism of economy, government must create favorable conditions and environments for entrepreneurship. This is why China has National High-tech Development Zones, a unique kind of SEZ that put special focus on technology advancement and transformation in the process of industrialization. NHZs were initiated in late 1980s, not much later than other SEZs. Nowadays NHZ generate over 10% of China's GDP, and they have incubated China's own high-tech industries. The biggest merit of NHZs is that they created innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems. Last year was China's 30th anniversary of startup incubation. In the past 30 years, China has created the world's largest business incubation system with various incubation platforms as the pillars, including incubators, accelerators as well as co-working spaces.

To sum up, China's experience is not only to reform and open up to the world economy, but also to take the chance of technology and industry revolution, leveraging the power of the new economy to develop its own indigenous high-tech industries. Back to this research project, I would strongly recommend to take into consideration of China’s experience of development high-tech industry and to foster entrepreneurship, and it is also worth looking at how China can establish the linkages between itself and African countries, esp. between their tech-hubs.

Thank you so much.

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