How China Did It

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As recent as the 1980s, China was just a third world country struggling to develop the right economy just as we are doing today. But today, China has the second largest economy in the world just after the United States. If someone had made this prophesy even ten years ago, it would have sounded far fetched or absurd. So what did China’s leaders do to attain such an economic miracle that has pitched it directly against the United States for the position of the world’s superpower in just two centuries.
To understand where it all began, we have to move back in December 1978 when China embarked on a policy known as "Four Modernizations". In this policy, the country specified exactly four sectors of the economy that was given topmost priority. They were: Agriculture, Industry, Science and Technology and National Defense. Under this Policy, the country devised measures that stressed economic self-reliance in these four industries. To achieve this, they had a clearly defined method by which to achieve the economic self reliance they wanted. Some of the methods included:
1. They promoted an export led growth where the country boosted its production by importing machinery from Japan and the west and exporting non-high value finished products like kids toys, socks, shirt buttons and cheap electronics.
2. The government went on an expensive educational campaign that focused on an educational system that met the demands of current technology. It even included propaganda campaigns that made people imagine the future of a beautiful city by posting such Posters in public Ares. Today, China produces the more graduates than any other nation on earth. Another propaganda was the promoting of intellectuals as the foundation of a modern society. Instead of the rich, intellectuals rather became the role models of the society, further encouraging people to study. The use of such campaigns reflect how the government made a concerted effort to embed into the minds of the people the importance of education even if it was done through propaganda.
In all this, the government had specific targets with defined timeframes set against them to be able to measure success or failure. The government set up a Ten year plan of specific targets they needed to achieve with regard to production in order to be able to reach economic self reliance in those materials.  As of 1977, China was still a predominantly agricultural economy. The government therefore went on an agricultural mechanization and Irrigational improvements program that cost over USD 33billion.  Although capital was scarce for China at the beginning of the Ten year plan just as it is for Ghana now, the government devised strategies to meet their demand. One of the methods was to buy agricultural products from the people at low prices and sell them to the international market at higher prices, a strategy that we can easily replicate given that our internal currency has a different rate than that on the international market.  The country also sought revenue by expanding its tourism industry to attract more revenue for the state.
Basically, China started on its road to becoming a superpower not by using complex strategies and policies but by being realistic and setting achievable targets that they knew would definitely expand the economy and produce the prosperity they enjoy today.
We also can if we start.

Future Leaders of Ghana.(Our Aim)

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The future leaders of Ghana blog will exist as the main outlet for the group, Future Leaders of Ghana. It will exist to provide the right forum for a thorough discussion on strategies that can lift Ghana out of our current stagnated development and achieve the prosperity that all Ghanaians aspire for.

Ghana is blessed with a lot of natural resources including spectacular talents that are hard to come by in other parts of the world. However it is becoming increasingly difficult to break out of the stranglehold our previous governments have locked us in in terms of Development. To be able to achieve the spectacular economic growth that other countries like China and India are achieving, we need to start doing things in a new way.

We need to start developing policies and strategies that are best suited for our peculiar situation as a resource rich country in an under developed continent. If we get it right, we can help our neighbours to get it right.

We also need to integrate new technological advancements that are shaping the future of the world into our own strategic thinking and policies that will put us in the right place we need to be.We need to research how to integrate these technologies into the different sectors of our economy to allow the maximum output out of each  sector.

While all these and a lot more need to be done, the world in which we live today is fundamentally different from what it was just ten years ago. The way countries achieved prosperity has changed tremendously. To understand and be able to do this, there is the need for all people who are willing to participate in the future leadership of Ghana to understand and know the best way to make a country prosperous in the twenty first century.

It is the for this purpose that the group Future Leaders of Ghana has been formed to study and understand how to go about developing a nation such as ours. It is our objective that we would be able to make substantial contributions to the development of Ghana in terms of Policy making(including foreign, economic and monetary policy)

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Everyone who is interested in writing and submitting articles to this blog can contact me on farouk.alhassan@gmail.com

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