LETTER: One-sided China-bashing

Ian Bremmer's most recent column refers (“Mao stirs in his mausoleum as Maximum Xi rolls by”, January 6).  SA media consumers are flooded with one-sided China-bashing.

His assertion that after the Chinese Communist Party’s recent congress president Xi Jinping “can now continue his state-centric approach to China’s economy and an overtly nationalist foreign policy with even less internal resistance” cannot go unchallenged.

Xi’s broad foreign policy can be described as Afrocentric, which is the sole reason for the West’s heightened attacks on him. As a patriotic South African and avid follower of global politics, I feel obliged to list the achievements attained between SA and China, led by Xi.

Bilateral trade between Pretoria and Beijing has grown from less than R1bn in 1998 to R544bn in 2021. Even the Covid-19 pandemic failed to dent this trade.

SA is China’s top trading partner in Africa, and there is co-operation across different government ministries, the parliaments of both nations, business entities and people-to-people connections.

There is also close co-operation and partnership within the multilateral Forum on China-Africa Co-operation, which drives joint continental development initiatives.

At the height of the Covid pandemic the Chinese embassy in Pretoria, with the blessing of Xi, led broad programmes of intervention through donations to rescue numerous South African communities that were on the verge of starvation and disease.

I personally find the unchallenged views expressed by Bremmer a Western affront to China-Africa relations.

Dumisani Ndamase, Johannesburg

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