Joe Studwell

You massively over, you subsidize heavily

manufacturing your economy, and you end up with surplus.

And that surplus has to go somewhere.

So what the Chinese are doing with a surplus in Africa is entirely the same as what the Japanese were doing with it in the 70s and the Koreans in the 80s.

The thing to recognize is that where the Chinese have got to now is that at a political level, Belt and Road has been very heavily wound down

Not with any formal announcement of it's over, but I mean, they've just pulled back.

And various agencies that have been set up by the Chinese banks to do private equity in Africa and things like this have just been shuttered.

I mean, there are some projects.

that are funded by state banks, but they've got to jump over much higher hurdles to get done.

But what we're seeing when we talk about investment in manufacturing is private sector stuff from Chinese corporates that are not getting the backing of the state banking system.

Well, the one that claims to be the new Singapore is Rwanda, of course.

And you think this is insane when you hear it, but actually there's a certain logic to it.

You know, because Kagame's people say, well, look, it costs you a couple of thousand dollars to ship a container from China to Dar es Salaam, and it costs you $5,000 to truck it to Kigali.

So that means that you can produce stuff in...

here in Rwanda and not even be particularly efficient, put it together here and sell the stuff.

They haven't really done it with manufacturing yet, but they have done it with services.

And of course, a lot of Singapore is services.

In the book that says, you know, brutal but developmental.

And I think that's what it is.

And it is a very real question when you have acutely poor, malnourished people about what is the right priority.