A lecturer with the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana says Ghana does not have any foreign policy towards China to enable it to win the war on galamsey.
Lloyd Amoah says at best what the country has is a “collection of very erratic gestures” which has hindered it from achieving it wants in it dealing with the Asian country.
According to him, despite the fact that Ghana has issues with China, regarding galamsey and involvement in retail trading, the country needs to act and think smart.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Ghana Connect programme on Friday, he said Ghanaians must exploit the opportunities in China companies in the manufacturing industry as the country is industrialising.
“The manufacturing sector is collapsing, and there is no way to develop without developing the industry sector; japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea and others did it.
“We can use our China policy strategy to say that we want to strengthen our muscularity in that sector as the Chinese are rebalancing their economy to move away from export-led to one that is based on internal consumption,” he said.
He argued further that because of the resources they let out into the Chinese economy after the financial crisis, their economy has a lot of resources that it wants to invest outside of its region.
Mr Amoah cited how two years ago, the Chinese ambassador in Kenya reaffirmed the Chinese government’s commitment to shift its industries to Africa.
“They have cheap labour which we can retrain, so in many ways, it is not a battle that we need to win but take advantage of,” he said.
Adding his voice to the discussion, Alfred who live and work as a teacher in China, said the Chinese government is ready to give loans to its nationals to explore natural resources in Africa countries yet the only business non-nationals can do in China is either teach or buying from them and selling elsewhere.
“Their population is huge and if the nationals are struggling to get jobs, how much more a foreigner? It is all about the teaching which more foreigners engage in,” he said.
Alfred said it is an indictment on the government of Ghana that it citizens travel to Asia to engage in teaching to earn a living calling.
He bemoaned how Ghana is endowed with natural resources, the extraction of which has not being regulated for a long time.
“China is good when one comes in to do business but everything else is changing even with the teaching, the rules and policies are changing,” Alfred said.
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