
Kenya will start teaching Chinese to elementary school students from 2020 - kaboro
https://qz.com/africa/1517681/kenya-to-teach-mandarin-chinese-in-primary-classrooms/
======
dkiarie
From the article: _" Mandarin is set to be taught alongside local languages
besides other foreign ones including French and Arabic."_

They could just as easily have titled the article:

 _" Kenya will start teaching French to elementary school students from
2020."_

But of course that would have triggered fewer people leading to fewer readers
(probably wouldn't have made it to HN either).

I'm quite wary about "Chinese neocolonialism" myself, but as a Kenyan Citizen
who's seen the massive QOL improvement in the country over the last few years,
I really don't see the issue with teaching the worlds most widely spoken
language in schools.

~~~
qiqing
Thank you for being the voice of reason by pointing out the obvious that
others seem to miss.

------
lordnacho
I started learning Mandarin a few months ago. My kid goes to a Saturday school
so I figured I might as as well join when they made an adults class.

Thus far it's been reasonable. I do have some advantages, having parents who
speak Cantonese. In fact a lot of the words seem similar. The grammar might be
different, but we're not flying through the course since it's once a week.

I'd say thus far it's like when I went to learn German, being a native speaker
of Danish. With just a very few lessons, knowing the neighbouring language
opens up the new language very fast. I could pick up a German newspaper and
read it within a few weeks, it having been gibberish to me previously. Even
quite complex political stuff was understandable suddenly.

With Mandarin my expectations are lower. The characters are still hard to
remember, and tbh I haven't spent the time trying to memorize them. What's
cool is I've learned how to use a pinyin keyboard, which allows me to convert
the sounds written in Latin script to Chinese characters. Much like one might
write emojis. But I'm able to write stuff to Chinese friends and they can read
it.

The great thing is translation services are pretty good now. You can just
paste the pinyin into google translate, and something sensible seems to come
out. Part of this is of course I have closer priors being a Cantonese speaker.

And finally I'm now on WeChat, which turns out to be one of the biggest apps
in the world. Interesting to see how design is done in other parts of the
world. The teacher has us write answers to questions in WeChat, and she has us
pronounce stuff so she can critique it.

~~~
jason_slack
I started much this same way. I started at a local college taking just
Mandarin I. I bought a bunch of books. I spent 2 months in China too. This was
really worth it.

I do practice for an hour each day writing in Chinese. I also keep my day
planner in Chinese and make notes in Chinese. I mean physically writing
characters out.

WeChat is great.

Pleco is a great dictionary. I have it open all day long.

Google Translate is good. WeChat Translate and Google Translate differ on
translations quite a bit. Bonus that translate.google.com is available while
inside China.

Take a look at the "Chineasy" books. I found them great for gaining history of
characters and therefore an understanding of why the characters are the way
they are. Here is an example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FNvW19GbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FNvW19GbA)

There is a good TED Talk - 3,500 characters vs 26 letters:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LvhjgW9zh0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LvhjgW9zh0)

I actually was going to start a Discourse forum for learning Chinese. I have
it ready to do basically just need to get a domain name.

Edit: Added YT link.

~~~
alexeldeib
Did you have any prior background? I only ask because many commenters either
were familiar with Cantonese or have Chinese heritage. I'm primarily familiar
with Romance languages + German (i.e., never learned a new alphabet, no
Arabic/Russian) and I'm curious about the impression of someone after diving
in.

~~~
jhedwards
It really depends on the person, for me learning pronunciation is easy, I have
the talent to be able imitate to other people's speech pretty accurately. On
the other hand, I have a terrible handicap with learning grammar. It just
feels like rote memorization of meaningless rules and it never sticks.

So for me personally Mandarin was like a dream come true because there's
barely any grammar at all _. I just have to speak the words in the correct
order "you want with me eat food?" "you eat finished?" "tomorrow we together
go climb mountain?".

_relatively speaking. There's grammar of course and it's interesting and
subtle, but it's much less than romance languages and there are basically no
exceptions. The closest thing to the exception I can think of is the "ill-
thought out sentence" （没想好的句子）, which is an exception to word order where you
forget to say the beginning of the sentence and instead put it at the end: "go
see movie? ...you tomorrow"

~~~
FabHK
I think that's a common misconception, as you've already alluded to - there is
grammar, and it's easy to speak incorrectly if you don't study. There's just
no inflection (do/does/did/done, der Mann/des Mannes/dem Manne/den Mann,
hablas/hablaste/hablabas/hablaras/etc.)

~~~
jhedwards
Yes that's more accurate, it's really just the lack of inflection, which
despite being a massive thing by itself, is by no means the entirety of
grammar. I love Chinese grammar: the particles, the verb aspect markers, the
resultative complements, they all feel really logical to me.

------
zhobbs
China is investing a lot in Africa, good video on the topic, "How Africa is
Becoming China's China":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQV_DKQkT8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQV_DKQkT8o)

------
mark_l_watson
I took an online class at Wharton Business School and the teacher said that
Africa would be an economic power in twenty years. Teaching Mandarin in school
is probably a good idea.

When my wife and I were in Kenya we went to two elementary schools and the
kids in class seemed very happy to be there. Even at a young age someone
probably informed them that education is the ticket to a better life.

~~~
ishjoh
what are the changes that are taking place that will allow Africa to be an
economic power in twenty years?

~~~
beat
"Africa" isn't one place, but rather a collection of dozens of countries. But
in general, most of them are on the aggressive-growth path that leads from
agrarian/illiterate poverty to urban/literate middle class over the course of
2-3 generations, just like Asian and European countries before them. Many
African nations are growing economically at rates north of 5% annually, far
faster than any "first world" nation.

Colonialism has been replaced by international trade, which expects nations to
hold up their end of business. That means businesses want - need - workers who
can read and do arithmetic, who are reasonably healthy, have access to
transportation and personal communication (phones, internet). They need roads,
clean water, good airports, stable local currencies, effective legal systems,
all sorts of things that the old colonial system did not require. Provide
schools, roads, vaccinations, clean water, and good currency, and it affects
everyone. Things get much better very quickly.

This happened in America, too. Hell, both my grandfathers were illiterate. One
didn't even have running water or electricity on his farm, when I was a small
child and he was an old man. It wasn't weird then.

~~~
qnsi
Ireland grew 4.1% in 2018. 26 out of 54 African countries had higher growth in
2017. Africa had an average growth of 4.34%, but Libia had 55% growth. Without
Libia, average growth was 3,38%.

This says little about the overall state, one should examine more years, also
I am comparing 2018 to 2017 but I am too lazy.

Bearish on Africa

~~~
beat
I'm looking at ten year averages from Global Finance magazine. Over ten years,
Ireland is at 3.3%, and even that makes it an outlier among western nations
(it's the highest ranked European country). By comparison, the US is at 1.4%,
and most of Europe is around 1%.

Libya is at -9.4% over the decade, largely due to the civil war there. Much of
Africa is over 5% average for the decade (Kenya is 5%). Except for a few
failed states like Libya and South Sudan, almost every country in Africa is
above 2.5% growth over the past decade.

I'm _really_ bullish on Africa. The numbers support it.

------
boomboomsubban
Looking at the curriculum linked, it seems like Mandarin is being offered as
an elective while English is a mandatory subject.

~~~
tr33house
Kenyan here. English has always been mandatory in Kenya, seeing that it's a
former British colony, just like India

------
mc32
Naturally, people will gravitate to where they believe opportunity lies. It's
a great opportunity now in order to foster commerce and trade with China which
has focused on East Africa.

Yet, this is only part of the requirements. Connections and insidership are
also important. Just like learning Japanese in the 70s and 80s didn't mean you
automatically qualified for a job, if you had connections and were an insider,
knowing Japanese helped quite a bit. It'll likely be the same here.

------
fudged71
Oddly a lot of positivity in this thread. Anecdotally, the kenyans I know are
really not pleased with the Chinese invasion of their culture and food stocks.
There is fear of food fraud (fillers and ingredients sold as other things) for
example from chinese imports.

~~~
coryrc
Kenyans are poisoning other Kenyans by cooking things in PCB-laden oil. You
know, a chemical that causes places to be labeled Superfund sites in the US.

[https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/thieves-f...](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/thieves-
fry-kenya-power-grid-fast-food-2014122884728785480.html)

~~~
MattPearce
I'm surprised they haven't started adding bitterant to the oil, is there a
reason that wouldn't work in this case?

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Recommended reading:

[http://pinyin.info/readings/defrancis/chinese_writing_reform...](http://pinyin.info/readings/defrancis/chinese_writing_reform.html)

Summary: emperical evidence shows that students who were taught Pinyin
(romanized, phonetic Chinese writing) were far better off than students who
learned with Hanzi characters (the pictograms you're familiar with). Despite
this, Chinese written language reform is unlikely to happen due to political
pressures from the elites, whose family's positions are secured by the higher
barrier to entry to becoming an intellectual. It takes more work to learn
Chinese than almost any other language because they _want it to_.

For this reason, even setting aside the other moral quandries presented by
China, I'm against teaching Mandarin in schools. Though, as an optional class
for high-school-level children, it makes more sense.

Edit: probably worth clarifying that I study Hanzi characters and I am fluent
in Japanese.

~~~
zavi
The advantage of pictograms is you can infer meaning from component radicals
when looking at more complicated pictograms. Pinyin is useful but limited,
e.g. there is a number of different pictograms that are all pronouced 'shi4'
so simply by looking at pinyin you won't be able to differentiate without
additional context that might not be available in written scenario.

~~~
jason_slack
>'shi4'

but isn't that when you use context around the word to know what the meaning
is? The same happens in English...you don't always know without context.

学习中文很有趣！

Xuéxí zhōngwén hěn yǒuqù!

hanzi or pinyin reading either way I know what this is intended to say.

~~~
simplify
That's just spoken language. There are many words that are "literary", which
means they are used primarily in writing and not spoken language. Without
hanzi it would be very difficult to understand what is written.

~~~
jason_slack
Yup this can be true.

If you read something like duo(3) it could be a measure word for flowers (朵)
or maybe mean “to hide or avoid” (躲)

------
sonnyblarney
The ability to communicate in another language can really only be a positive
development for any individual group.

~~~
peteey
How are you judging positivity?

Classroom time should be spent on the most important things. Learning for the
sake of learning is meaningless. There is no value in knowing how many dots
are on the ceiling. The classroom time could been spent learning something
more meaningful. For example, cursive writing should not be taught.

I would suggest only praising skills that help a child economically or make
life fulfilling. I do not consider learning different ways to say a word as
fulfilling as history, art, or philosophy.

~~~
lotyrin
Reductio ad absurdum. Could just as easily say any of the following:

I do not consider learning how to smear grease on a canvas could be as
fulfilling as <whatever>.

I do not consider memorizing dates and people's names as fulfilling as
<whatever>.

I do not consider ruminating on some made up dilemmas to be as fulfilling as
<whatever>.

Second language learning is a hell of a lot more than learning a foreign
vocabulary.

People like different things (to say absolutely nothing of the other half of
how you justify investing in learning -- the economic value of having mastered
a second language). Even if it were possible that your individual tastes were
some kind of universal truth and we're all just unenlightened -- what have you
done to enlighten us here -- the value of the things you like must be self
evident? Is everyone just an NPC?

------
Bombthecat
Embrace the change and opportunity!

In germany we tried to start teaching Turkish at school. Boy was that a shit
show of racism...

~~~
tql
Teaching German kids Turkish feels like it has a political motive more than
anything else. I can see Kenyans gaining opportunities of improving their
lives by learning Chinese. What do Germans have to earn from learning Turkish?
Are you sure the backlash was racism and not just a lot of "what a terrible
waste of time and public money"?

~~~
Bombthecat
Turkish is the most spoken language at homes with migration background.

Not even speaking about the percentage of people from foreign countries
speaking or understanding Turkish as a second language.

Beside English and German, Turkish is the most understood and spoken language
in germany.

Why not teach it in schools? you can pick languages, Latin, France, so why not
Turkish? (beside English)

~~~
tql
If all those families moved to Germany because there was no future in Turkey,
it's highly unlikely that learning Turkish will do any good for them. I think
the objective of a public education has to be to improve the lives of people,
if they want to learn Turkish or Klingon they should pay for it themselves.

Also I can imagine that adding a new language choice is very expensive.

~~~
amaccuish
> If all those families moved to Germany because there was no future in
> Turkey, it's highly unlikely that learning Turkish will do any good for them

The classes are for people who only speak German. People emigrating from
Turkey likely speak Turkish.

It's about understanding other cultures, and the ones most relevent. Just like
how in England, along with learning about christianity, we learnt about Islam.

It's like in the US, Spanish is the most popular second language taught in
schools, since you're very close to large numbers of spanish speakers, and
have a high number of spanish-speaking migrants. In the UK, amongst a load of
other reasons, until very recently French was the most poopular second
language in schools, since France is pretty close to us.

~~~
tql
Germans don't have to learn about Turks. Turks have to learn about Germans and
blend in. If they can't, that's a very serious failure.

~~~
amaccuish
You seemed to have ignored several of my points, which leads me to believe
that you're not debatting in good faith.

> Germans don't have to learn about Turks

Why not? If they reside in the same country, mutual culteral understanding can
be key for integration.

> Turks have to learn about Germans and blend in

We can have both, Germans learn a bit of Turkish, Turks learn German, where's
the problem?

> If they can't, that's a very serious failure.

Where above is it indicated that Turks are failing to learn German?

------
40acres
This is a double edged sword. China is increasing it's influence in Africa
through it's debt and road .. ahem, I mean, belt and road.. initiative and is
arguably the most influential great power in Africa.

It's doubtful, even in the long term that Mandarin will challenge English and
French with respect to influence in Africa, but language is one of the
strongest signifiers of cultural influence, and it's obvious that China is
looking to tighten its influence on Africa.

That being said, the ability to speak Mandarin can only be viewed as a
benefit. English is the de facto international language but there is an
obvious advantage to fluency in a language spoken by the 2nd largest economy
and 1.5 billion people.

------
odiroot
That actually really sounds promising. Wish I had some Mandarin "for free" as
a part of my HS/Uni curriculum.

~~~
lisper
I'm pretty sure that this "free" Mandarin comes with a pretty thick string
attached.

~~~
TomMarius
How much will the kids owe to the Chinese exactly?

~~~
lisper
I don't know. How much is Kenya worth exactly?

------
onetimemanytime
Kenya holds third highest Chinese debt in Africa
[https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2018/09/kenya-holds-
thi...](https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2018/09/kenya-holds-third-
highest-chinese-debt-in-africa/)

Chinese names might be the next move :). Sorry but I don't think this is a
coincidence.

------
United857
As a supporter of multilingual education in general I'm all for this in
principle.

That said, language learning really needs a media ecosystem to sustain it
outside the classroom. (Most Americans take token Spanish or French but would
be hard pressed to go beyond 'hola' or 'bonjour' in real life.)

Beijing projects its power through economic and political means. But that's
not enough. Unlike e.g. Japan (anime, video games) or South Korea (K-drama,
K-pop), China still doesn't have pop-cultural "soft power" to help fuel said
ecosystem -- I'd argue this is the main problem China needs to overcome for
the language to really take off in non-Chinese communities.

------
jasonjei
Shouldn’t they start younger than 10? I remember reading that languages are
easier to retain the younger you are.

~~~
vinay427
Also, it's virtually impossible to gain fluency in a script after a very young
age (around 5 if I recall correctly) and verbal language isn't much better,
with native fluency very rare after the age of 13-17 or so.

~~~
HAL9000Ti
Source please, and define fluency.

I learned english at 22, german at 25, and mandarin at 28, It took several
years of daily studying for each language, but I did it, and I was able to use
these languages in professional environments. Plenty of people do it in my
experience.

~~~
vinay427
I did state "native fluency" which is more descriptive.

Anyway, sure, here's a source I found quickly which actually makes stronger
claims than I did: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/at-what-age-
does-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/at-what-age-does-our-
ability-to-learn-a-new-language-like-a-native-speaker-disappear/)

------
standardUser
It will be interesting to watch China try and exert soft power. Like
everything they do, it's going to be a top-down affair. Hard to imagine the
Standing Committee coming up with anything as influential as rock-n-roll or
blue jeans.

Japan proved that East Asian culture is perfectly capable of capturing the
global imagination. But that didn't happen until the culture had decades to
develop in a prosperous and free society.

I imagine that for the most part we'll just see a lot more of this. Throwing
money at nations that have a hard time saying no, and simply trying to buy
cultural influence. I don't imagine it will be a huge success.

~~~
rjf72
There's one way that China has done phenomenal with soft power already in a
very bottom up fashion: tourism. At least throughout Asia, Chinese tourists
are absolutely everywhere. This is a relatively new phenomena and I imagine
it's a product of their middle class exploding (in a good way). You can also
find countless Chinese migrating to other nations but still very much
retaining their own culture.

As a result of these things the Chinese language is an increasingly valuable
skill throughout the continent. And you even see a variety of things like
signs and other things that are also written in a local language, English, and
Chinese as well.

It's extremely difficult to predict where China is headed, but in my opinion
they are blazing their own trail in a way that, for now at least, seems to be
working phenomenally well. And there's one critical nuance here. China has a
population of 1.4 billion that is _mostly_ united. If their economic growth
and general influence continues along anything even vaguely resembling its
current trajectory, they will be the most powerful and influential nation in
the world in the very foreseeable future.

~~~
planteen
> If their economic growth and general influence continues along anything even
> vaguely resembling its current trajectory, they will be the most powerful
> and influential nation in the world in the very foreseeable future.

I agree China will become the world's largest economy in the near future, it
remains to be seen if they will be able to escape the middle income trap.
China demographically is getting older and is set for a decline in population.
What happens if the population starts declining before achieving high-income
status?

------
kilotaras
Obviously an anecdote, but a friend of Minsk told me that knowing Mandarin can
easily raise your salary x2, especially on managerial/sales positions.

------
wyxuan
It might be difficult, as chinese is incredibly difficult to learn. It seems
just like a way to appease the Chinese government. I wonder what how they
teach english.

------
nightraven97
How Africa is becoming China's China -
[https://youtu.be/zQV_DKQkT8o](https://youtu.be/zQV_DKQkT8o)

------
TomMarius
I wish they taught me Chinese as well.

~~~
jason_slack
Have you started learning Chinese yet? It is quite fascinating. I've been
learning for 4 years now.

------
crazygringo
Warning, controversial opinion: Chinese is too hard to be cost-effective to
learn.

I took 3 years' worth of Mandarin in college.

But when I traveled to Brazil, I was able to communicate more easily in
Portuguese in just a month, than I was in China after 2 full years of courses
plus two and a half months of intensive courses in Beijing.

Chinese is hard because it has virtually zero cognates with English, you have
to learn every word new. (Contrast with Portuguese, where I "knew" half the
words already because I could easily guess that "television" is just
"televisão". Same with French, Italian, etc.)

And Chinese is hard because you have to learn how to "spell" every word
separately -- if you thought zero cognates was hard, this is 10x harder.

Quite frankly it's an insane time commitment, and unless you plan to live most
of your life in China or Taiwan, it's just not worth it if your goal is
communication. Chinese people are learning English so they can communicate
with the world. It might seem unfair, but there's just zero practical reason
for most English speakers to learn Chinese beyond some basic greetings, except
as a fun hobby or some minimum vocabulary for travel.

For more info, read the very famous article "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard". [1]
Anybody who wants to learn Chinese should read it first so they know what
they're getting into.

[1]
[http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html](http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html)

~~~
PavlikPaja
That's only true when you already speak English, or at least another Germanic
or Romance language. Otherwise, all this applies to English exactly the same
as it does to Chinese.

~~~
crazygringo
No, it's vastly easier for Chinese to learn English (or French or German)
because they're generally phonetically-spelled languages.

There aren't any cognates, but you don't spend years memorizing thousands and
thousands of characters to learn English.

And the payoff is much higher: learning Chinese only lets you communicate with
Chinese/Taiwanese people. Learning English lets you communicate with a huge
proportion of the world who also learns English as a second language, simply
because it's the current lingua franca.

~~~
PavlikPaja
I learned English. The spelling is a nightmare, you essentially need to learn
it twice. Chinese at least doesn't pretend to be phonetic.

You also need smaller vocabulary in Chinese - 3500 characters is all you need.
English vocabulary is absolutely massive.

The grammar is pretty bizarre as well, as far as I am able to judge.

~~~
52-6F-62
Tangential to the main topic, but relevant to some of your remarks about
English grammar.

Have you ever read _Politics and the English Language_ by George Orwell?

Since covering it in High School, it's been my go to for all writing. Writing
the way he describes will have everyone understand you. It doesn't need to be
more complex than that. It might be argued that it's superior in most cases.
(Sadly we never covered this in our general English classes. We only covered
it in Creative Writing)

Here are his six rules for writing, and a link to the essay for anyone
interested:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used
to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can
think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

[https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79p/](https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79p/)

\---

Edited to add my favourite example of what the essay is largely about:

 _Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give
another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of
its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good
English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from
Ecclesiastes:

"""I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men
of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance
happeneth"""

Here it is in modern English:

"""Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion
that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be
commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the
unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."""_

------
randyrand
Shouldn't the HN title stay the same as the article? The original title is
*Mandarin Chinese, unless they changed it.

------
mooseburger
That's pretty bad. Yet another sign of increasing Chinese dominance. I can't
imagine an autocracy like China becoming the greatest superpower will work out
well for anyone.

~~~
gxs
I know a few people in the clothes design industry and they all say
manufacturing is moving out of Asia and into Africa.

According to them, by next year most of their stuff will be made there.

China has made a huge investment in Africa - so they will get a piece of that
action.

Feels like the US is resting on their laurels.

Why the downvotes? This comment got a few reasonable responses and is within
HN guidelines. Help me understand what is so offensive about this post

~~~
ryanmarsh
I recently had dinner with a friend who spent 8 years working for the US State
dept all over Africa.

His take was simple. When the US shows up offering to build a road to the oil
refinery we want to build we first ask them to make human rights reforms and
so forth.

The Chinese just start handing out cash until they get what they want.

This strategy will result in the wholesale ownership of several African states
by China if it hasn’t already happened.

~~~
zwkrt
It is very interesting to me how the perspective of the Chinese government
seems to be that they should run their entire sovereignty like a business.
Some politicians in the US claim to want to run /government/ like a business,
but China seems happy to run the entire country as one.

In China we effectively have a CEO in Xi Jinping, beholden to the board of
investors that is the global economy. And the same forces are at play. China
can punt on ethics so long as the return is good, and they have pressure to
keep growing. So long as the banks are happy the game continues.

The global investment-backed economy is efficient for allocating resources for
the purposes of increasing monetary value but it will always introduce a moral
hazard since short term returns will usually be better when corners are cut.

~~~
talloaktrees
Xiang?

~~~
digibo
Autocomplete from Xi probably.

~~~
zwkrt
yes, thank you

------
BigKurt
Could be a great idea. There's a big possibility that Chinese will be more
widely used over the planet.

~~~
fiftyfifty
We are headed to the world (universe) depicted in Firefly!

------
demarq
This is deeply unsettling to be honest. It means kenya is looking f or a long-
term relationship with China even though chinas debt driven diplomacy is
already pushing the country into a precarious financial state.

~~~
beat
What "precarious financial state"? The Kenyan economy has grown at a steady,
rapid 5% pace for the past decade, with no backsliding or instability. Are you
sure you're not making assumptions based on political conventional wisdom,
rather than facts and observation?

China wants trading partners, generally. It drives their economy, so it's in
their best interest to see their partners do well. And since China has
increased per capita GDP by 130x (in constant dollars) since 1960, they know
something about lifting nations out of poverty.

edit: Per world bank data, Kenya's per capita GDP has increased every year
since 2002, and has nearly quadrupled in that time (from $395 to over $1500).
If that's a precarious state, sign me up!
[[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=KE)]

~~~
demarq
> Are you sure you're not making assumptions based on political conventional
> wisdom, rather than facts and observation?

I tried really hard to make sense out of that. I really did.

> What "precarious financial state"?

\- "Kenya debt is rising to dangerous levels"[1]

\- "Kenya holds the 3rd largest chinese debt["2]

\- "Bleak 2019 for Kenyan tax payers"[3]

> rather than facts and observation?

I literally live here.

As for the 5% GDP growth you point out, surely much better than Tanzania, or
Ethiopia right?.

> China wants trading partners, generally

> they know something about lifting nations out of poverty

Yup. Their economy badly needs a group of poor African countries as trading
partners. definitely, nothing to do with power and global politics.

Here is china lifting nations out of poverty...

\- "Like Zambia, Sri Lanka also handed over port to China to pay off debt"[4]

Yup, uplifting stuff.

> Kenya's per capita GDP has increased every year since 2002, and has nearly
> quadrupled in that time (from $395 to over $1500)

"Kenyans owe $1,0000 per capita" [5].

1\. [https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/08/06/kenyas-public-
deb...](https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/08/06/kenyas-public-debt-is-
rising-to-dangerous-levels_c1798513)

2\. [https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2018/09/kenya-holds-
thi...](https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/2018/09/kenya-holds-third-
highest-chinese-debt-in-africa/)

3\. [https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Bleak-2019-for-
tax...](https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Bleak-2019-for-taxpayers-as-
Kenya-begins-repaying-loans/2560-4923632-bsy6lx/index.html)

4\. [https://www.africanliberty.org/2018/09/10/like-zambia-sri-
la...](https://www.africanliberty.org/2018/09/10/like-zambia-sri-lanka-also-
handed-over-port-to-china-to-pay-off-debt/)

5\. [https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/01/08/kenyans-owe-
sh100...](https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/01/08/kenyans-owe-
sh100000-each-in-public-debt_c1693640)

as bonus content, guess what security Kenya used to secure the last loan. read
to find out

[https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Mombasa-port-
SGR-l...](https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Mombasa-port-SGR-loan-
default-Chinsa/2560-4903360-clh5nn/index.html)

If none of that can convince you, I just don't know what could. I'm exhausted
at this point.

~~~
beat
All good points. First things first... I assumed you're an American. If you're
Kenyan, then I was wrong and you're coming from a more educated perspective.
Please understand that Americans have some wild assumptions about the rest of
the world.

The articles on Kenya's debt situation were very enlightening, thank you! It
looks offhand like it's problematic, but not unsolvable. See where things are
in another ten years. But a debt crisis isn't any better for lenders than it
is for debtors. What good does it do China for Kenya to default on its loans?

As for 5% growth... that's really good. Maybe not the best in Africa, but far
better than the mature economies of the West (most of Europe has hovered
around 1% for the same period, and the US is 1.4%). That makes for an
attractive investment opportunity, especially by non-state actors who are even
less interested in defaulted loans than nations are.

As for China's interest... well, their manufacturing-based economy needs a
steady supply of raw materials. Africa has those. And China is not interested
in military occupation to enforce resource extraction, colonial style. That
leaves trade, and trade has to be mutually beneficial over the long term, or
one party will just stop participating.

(edit: As an aside, it's absurd and annoying that your comment is getting
downvoted. I really wish people would stop using downvoting as a "disagree"
button, especially for things they don't understand.)

~~~
demarq
understood, and sorry if I came off very angry. It's a topic I feel very
strongly about.

~~~
beat
Sure, that's understandable.

I hope you get where I'm coming from. The question, to me at least, is whether
Chinese activity in Kenya does Kenya more good than harm, and I think it
probably does. I also believe it's in China's best interest that Kenya becomes
economically successful, and not default on its debt, and that China knows
this.

If China is using economic relations to become a dominant player in Africa (as
opposed to American gunboat diplomacy or British colonialism), they need to be
perceived as a better deal for the countries involved. Which isn't that hard!

