On Made In China 2025

PRINCEWILL ODIDI

On several occasions, I run across these Chinese kids here in Georgia Tech. What surprises me is the type of courses they study. Almost all of them under Chinese government scholarship here to study in America’s best universities are studying courses that have to do with the future.

They study Artificial Intelligence, Systems Science, Engineering and hard core courses for tomorrow’s world. Their social lives are zero and they always hold sophisticated telephones. Very surprising, but China is a country that thinks ahead and every Chinese is a potential suspect.

Have you ever heard of the concept, made in China 2025? It is Chinese Development blueprint that had sent fear around the world. It is meant to transform China from a labour intensive economy that makes toys, clothes, pharmaceuticals to one that engineers advanced products like robots electric cars and space explorations.

The Chinese are believed to be the most determined species of the human race. Once they set their minds to achieve a goal nothing stops them.

Earlier today, I listened to a commentary where the presenter clearly stated that the Chinese state would not mind stealing technology and intellectual property just to meet their goal. I also read elsewhere, that Chinese kids are sent in droves to study unique courses like Artificial Intelligence, Information Systems, System Science, Robotic Engineering, and Systems Engineering in American schools. Surprisingly this is a deliberate state policy. You never see a Chinese student on scholarship studying Arts, Social Sciences or Religion.

What is most troubling is that they study these courses in America and United Kingdom top ivy leagues. They are here on full state sponsored scholarships. While the economies of the world including the United States are exporting production distribution and exchange in an era of globalization, China is pursuing an agenda of localizing production.

They promote a policy to get almost 70 percent of their production value chain domiciled locally. This is very dangerous because in the future the entire world will answer to China in terms of production. My concern with China is how can a country and a people get it so right? Always ahead of the rest! Always scheming at a time our own kids are holidaying and eating barbecue in foreign restaurants.

The more I study the Chinese, the more I fall in love with these guys. They have leaders that think. They have leaders that plan for tomorrow. More interesting, even children as young as five years in China know in every transaction they have to eat up their opponents or be eaten.

The big question: Can we ever have a country built on values? Unfortunately, this is our biggest handicap in Nigeria. Our leaders think only of themselves. Selfish and greedy, and some of our young people think only of what they can scoop out of these greed.

Vision 2020 we planned, this is 2019, nothing to write home about. Even the government themselves are busy politicking and killing themselves with no regard to attain the goals of vision 2020. Open a discussion with a Federal Minister on how his ministry plans to meet the vision 2020 goals he has no idea what you are talking about.

Our hospitals are still consulting clinics; women still give birth at home without medical support, our roads in disrepair, our schools abandoned and our politicians clueless.

Is there hope for our country that we can ever plan and execute with precision like the Chinese?

Sometime I wonder, do we embrace the Chinese and be recolonized or do we continue to align with the West?

These young Chinese kids in Western schools studying Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are the ones to compete with our own kids 20 years from now at a time our educational system and universities are dead and lecturers still going on strike. I fear for my country and our future, to be candid I fear!

Princewill Odidi – a Development Analyst writes from Atlanta.