Moroccan historian Tayeb Bayad recently published a book on the journey entitled: “The Discovery of China”, which is about notes and reflections he wrote during his visit to the country of the Dragon in 2018, during which he learned about an inspiring success experience thanks to which China moved from a country teeming with poor people to A strong economy hits a thousand accounts.
This book was published by “Dar Al-Hikma” within the publications of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Ain Al-Shaq in Casablanca, where Tayeb Bayad works as a university professor, and he has several books, including “Journalism and History”, which was published in 2019.
In his new book, Bayad presents observations and reflections on the success of the Chinese development experience after he visited a number of Chinese cities and villages that were distinguished in fighting poverty and achieving development. achieve it, not to mention the realism and humility of a position of strength.
The historian argues through his book about Morocco and presents it as a golden bridge for China towards Africa within the framework of the “Belt and Road” initiative, given its geographical location, infrastructure, logistics, legal and institutional arsenal, banking and financial infrastructure, and communications infrastructure. political stability, and a forward-looking industrial vision.
This is the text of the interview:
First, how did your interest in China begin, leading to the field visit and then writing the travelogue?
My interest in China dates back to my university years through my knowledge of Ibn Battuta's journey And on some studies related to the history of China within the subject of the Far East, then the literature that dealt with the experience of Mao Zedong, the Cultural Revolution, the Three Worlds Theory, and others. Therefore, I was somewhat prepared for scientific interest in the subject when I was asked, in the years 2016 and 2017, to attend two scientific symposiums devoted to the topic of China and its relationship to Morocco and Africa, organized by Hassan II University in Casablanca and the Confucius Institute in the same city. At that time, I had never thought of visiting this country, until I received a phone call on the morning of Friday, May 11, 2018, from my colleague and friend Abd al-Majid al-Jihad, the Moroccan director of the Confucius Institute in Casablanca, asking about my readiness to go after less than two weeks on a trip to China, may extended for more than ten days. At that time, I was focusing my attention on a scientific project that was difficult to distract from in any other matter, as I explained in the text of the trip, but it happened that things became easy in a way that I did not expect at all, and it was decided for me to leave for the country of the wise Confucius.
Since I had a previous familiarity with travel literature; In 2016, I published the book “Moroccan Travelers in Europe between the Seventeenth and Twentieth Centuries, Representations and Attitudes.” I had a deep desire to write, one day, the text of my trip to a country, provided that there are elements of wealth worthy of being written down and shared with readers. . Therefore, I set about writing the diary of the trip at the time, and took a group of photos of a documentary nature, and collected enough documents that were distributed to us within the extensive and varied trip program, which were in the form of guides. Then I let the matter brew for two years, which I estimated was enough to distance myself from the topic, so as not to write under the influence of fascination, before I took out my blogging kit during the quarantine period in May 2020, seeking to write a narrative text with a load of social and human sciences supported by documentary evidence.
Our country recently signed an important agreement with China to implement the Belt and Road Initiative, so it is natural that the reader's first idea of the book is "Morocco is a golden bridge for China towards Africa" in relation to the Belt and Road Initiative or the New Silk Road. How did you get this idea? Is it a historian’s physiognomy from the inspiration of the moment in your last meeting in Beijing, as stated on page 149 of the text of the trip, or is it related to a scientific study, as revealed in the last appendix of the book? by subject; This is about two scientific interventions within two international symposiums organized by the Confucius Institute and Hassan II University in Casablanca, the first under the title: “Morocco and China, the Horizon of Productive Partnership”, hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities Ain Chock in Casablanca, between 21 and 24 April 2016, and the second Entitled: “Morocco and the Bet on the Golden Bridge between Africa and China”, at the Faculty of Legal, Economic and Social Sciences, Ain Chock, Casablanca, on May 12 and 13, 2017.
In fact, the idea and title of the second scientific contribution was developed at the end of the first scientific contribution. It stopped at seven dimensions framing and supporting this proposition: geographical location, infrastructure and logistics, legal and institutional arsenal, banking and financial infrastructure, communications infrastructure, political stability, and forward-looking industrial vision. The strong Moroccan presence in Africa at the level of a range of sectors (banks, insurance, communications, construction and public works, transport and logistics, and phosphates...) enabled it to transform the road of salt and gold, which linked it in the past to its African depth, into a road for infrastructure in the first stage. Paving the way and guaranteeing a productive extension of the new Silk Road towards Africa through Morocco as its natural and golden bridge.
These conclusions had become entrenched in me after more than two years of research on the subject. I carried them with me during my trip to China, and shared them upon my arrival with the rest of the Moroccan delegation during our first fertile and intense discussions. They interacted with them in a productive and effective manner. Until the moment of presenting and evaluating the outcome came on Monday, June 4, 2018, at the central headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party, during a meeting supervised by the International Relations Department of the Central Committee of the Party, in the presence of “Young African Leaders” on the occasion of the end of their visit to China.
The session was very rich, and the organizational arrangements limited the guests' interventions to the words of the heads of delegations. So I considered it finished, but Ms. Li Shuang, the first secretary of the Office for Coordination of Foreign Affairs between the Party and the People of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, who coordinated this trip from beginning to end, had another opinion; She surprised me by interfering at the end of the session, addressing me by saying: It is unreasonable for an academic to be among us in an evaluation session and he does not give his part in it. I tried to apologize for not having prepared anything on the subject, but she invited me to contribute an impromptu speech, in the first three minutes, inspired by what had accumulated in this visit and what required the position of that session. Before I finish to the gist of what I want to say. The background is academic and the occasion is diplomatic, and the approach is improvisation surrounded by a narrow cut-off margin, which should be immunized from any emotion or reduction. I said: If I may summarize the history of your ancient country in three minutes and four stations, then I say: Confucius gave you wisdom and Mao Zedong gave you liberation, and between these two stations you lived all kinds of colonialism; Starting with the Portuguese colonialism, passing through the British colonialism that used opium to invade you, and ending with the Japanese colonialism. However, the third station on this date was inaugurated in 1978 with the era of reform and openness that gave you economic power, while the fourth station in 2013 with the new Silk Road came to break the siege and seek encirclement, and repositioned your country internationally in the era of globalization, which is the road that seeks to expand Africa on Rabah-Rabih rule, but this expansion needs a golden bridge, which I see carefully and well-chosen in my country, Morocco, which guarantees safe and productive transit for this expansion.
Which socialism with Chinese characteristics did you talk about? Is it possible to say that it is socialism coexisting with capitalism? And how was it linked to what was called the era of reform and opening-up?
Socialism with Chinese characteristics, or what is known as the policy of reform and opening-up, is a method of governance and governance and an approach to administration and management led by former Chinese President Deng Xiaoping after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. It is a policy that tried to combine economic planning with political will and open the door in an organized and state-controlled way to a market economy, while preserving the Chinese cultural identity, in addition to the need to take into account the ecological dimension.
With the launch of this new project in 1978, President Deng Xiaoping predicted that it would take China half a century to become the world leader. It was not in that prediction more akin to aspiration, neither a dreamer nor a delusional one, but rather he was realistic and aware of what he was saying, and he was inspired by successful neighboring experiences, and based his aspiration on a scholarly elite of experts and scholars who absorbed the research and studies of the most prestigious international universities, aware of strengths and weaknesses. Both capitalism and socialism, with a critical breath, extracted from its juice the honey of the success of the Chinese experiment in reform and openness, by formulating a tailor-made socialist model that they called “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
Deng Xiaoping, unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, tended not to project projections of ready-made theories or recipes, but rather proceeded from a deep assimilation of the historical and cultural reality of Chinese society, so he searched for “the truth through facts”, following the approach of his teacher Mao Zedong; He wanted everyone to be a contributor to the production of the idea and a participant in its activation, so he saw that "the Chinese people should cross the river themselves to feel through this exercise the pebbles at the bottom of the river." And he tended to pragmatism, so he drew from the local culture in his hometown in Sichuan Province, an old Chinese proverb circulating in it says: “It does not matter the color of the cat, whether it is white or black, as long as it catches mice.” The mouse that he wanted to catch first was poverty, which he considered to be nothing of socialism and that it was innocent of it.
Your first stop in China was in Shenzhen. How did this region succeed in transforming from a small fishing village into a metropolis of technology?
When former Chinese President Deng Xiaoping chose Shenzhen in 1978 to be the model and role model for the success of his policy Or the experience of reform and openness, at that time it was nothing more than a small village of fishermen, with a population not exceeding a few thousand, to embody the country's openness to the world, so the results of success exceeded his expectations. Forty years after the launch of this workshop, Shenzhen today, with a population of nearly twenty million, has become a home for technological models that are poles of international supremacy, such as Huawei, the communications equipment giant that amazed the world and confused the accounts of the United States of America, and DJI, the world leader in the field of civil unmanned aircraft. And the internet champion Tencent, the owner of the messaging application “Wechat”, which is the most popular in China and the alternative to the “WhatsApp” application in the West.
However, what caught my attention more about this city is that, in light of this amazing economic momentum, it is neither a cement city nor an environment of pollution. The strange thing about her experience is that she achieves imaginary transaction numbers in a space characterized by elegance and aesthetics. It is characterized by an ecological characteristic that is unparalleled in the world, as green spaces in the field of finance, business, innovation and investment occupy 45 percent, with its lush, sprawling public gardens, which number a thousand gardens. Thus, the green space of the city, trees and buildings that reached the sky high in the form of skyscrapers, share the number of more than a hundred thousand skyscrapers. That is, we are facing a smart eco-engineering of the city that raises the building towards the sky, making room on the ground for the expansion of green fields. So I said about it, in an effort to bring the idea closer to the Moroccan reader, to imagine the economic momentum of Casablanca in the beautiful environment of the city of Ifrane.
Fighting poverty is the biggest dilemma facing all countries of the world, how did China succeed in this field in the Guizhou region?
Guizhou is one of the most poverty-stricken areas in China. It has the highest percentage of the poor. In one of its cities, there are more than 700,000 poor people, and there are five governorates in this region whose number of poor people exceeds 100,000. To get out of the cycle of poverty, officials in the region identified seven main tasks:
1- Resettlement of the poor, which means developing housing to make it more habitable.
2- Raising the pace of construction and providing the necessary infrastructure, through access to water, electricity and means of communication, and connecting roads to all rural areas within a time frame not exceeding three years.
3- Fighting poverty through establishing and developing factories, i.e. preparing a comprehensive, integrated and harmonious industrial and agricultural structure.
4- Ensuring education, medical care and housing, by carrying out the necessary intervention and providing adequate guarantees.
5- Adopting a participatory approach in fighting poverty between the state and the people, with companies entering the line to contribute to this project according to specific controls.
6- Developing creativity and innovation in the field of combating poverty, to transform the region from the poorest to the most developed.
7- Supporting the cooperative system, by accompanying and guiding the farmers in order to create cooperatives in which they are shareholders and beneficiaries.
We had the opportunity to witness an experience in this region of anti-poverty concerns worthy of recall. It is related to the village of Haizi, which has an area of only five and a half square kilometers, with a population of five thousand people, located in an integrated rural tourism site with which work has been done to develop production and preserve On health and leisure tourism simultaneously.
In the past, the people of the village were content with cultivating maize according to a traditional way of living. However, this approach disappeared, giving way to fields shared with vegetables and kiwi fruit trees. Rather, it became a base for planting this type of fruit on an area of ten thousand acres. And the local administration relied in its care for the village farmers on a cooperative system that took care of almost everything related to managing its affairs; It is to him that the matter of infrastructure and attracting investments is due, which made the annual per capita income in the village reach ten thousand yuan in 2017. The village became the best place to live among all the Chinese countryside, and it became a destination for newcomers, not to mention its original inhabitants. There was even a reverse migration, after its people had left it to work in the cities.
What did this visit change in your view of the world?
In my view of the world, I have a conviction that I hold in terms of belonging to a field of knowledge concerned with studying the lives and paths of people in time, and it is related to the importance of understanding contexts and avoiding projections. As for my reading of the Chinese experience, I paid attention to the basic features that characterize the character of the Chinese person, which I see as explaining the reason for his success. Achieve it, and finally realism and humility from a position of strength. In relation to the topic of the golden bridge, I concluded what I ended my book with. That is, for Morocco, whether the partner is coming from the East within the framework of the Belt and Road, or coming from the West carried on the rug of “Africa’s Prosperity”, or from the far north in search of the warmth of the deserts and the bounties of the jungles, he will find himself facing a reality imposed by geography and anchored by Moroccan investment in its physical dimensions. And symbolic on the African level, it makes Morocco a necessary golden bridge to cross into Africa.
You relied in your nomadic text on a smooth narration and a fluid and attractive language that attracts the reader, and you employed an analysis network drawn from the humanities and social sciences in your understanding of what you witnessed, but why the round-trip between China and Morocco while writing the journey? Is it only for reasons of writing and breaking its linear trend, or for other purposes?
I indicated in the text of the trip that sometimes the comparison seems productive and fertilized with ideas of domestication with successful experiences and their environment in the local soil, without cloning or dropping, because the most important lesson in it is the context. And at other times, the slogan “there is no measurement with a difference” dominates, especially when the technological gap appears overwhelming and terrible. However, the dual lesson of the collective spirit in exchange for individualism and excessive selfishness, and the demographic mass as a lever for development against crude Malthusian justification, remains worthy of being the first session in the curriculum for those who want to sit in the first row in the Chinese take-off school, carrying their notebook to learn how it can be Half a century is enough for a world-shaking renaissance.
What concerned me mainly was understanding the context and how accumulation and even transgression occurred. But the two thousand journey within the board of the round-trip between Morocco and China is a creative and cognitive necessity at the same time, due to its importance in the writing process, sometimes in a retrospective way, and breaking the rhythm of linear notation that results in monotony in narration, and for its value in drawing lessons, enriching our stock of knowledge and collecting data and accurate data. Which may be useful in crystallizing a developmental vision from the core of our reality, especially since the codification period coincided with the formation of a committee for drafting a new development model.
Little by little, let's conclude this dialogue with a question: What are the lessons that can be learned from China's experience that would benefit Morocco?
It was no coincidence that I concluded the text of my trip with the following: “I carried this momentum with me In the journey of repentance, and the self appeared to me in the mirror of the other, it became clear that we, in turn, need to absorb many lessons and lessons contained in the lecture of the researcher Ann Cheng at the College de France and in other studies, in order to avoid rumination on the usual and familiar with the West in addressing the Chinese investor, the Chinese merchant and the Chinese tourist . They have their own culture and different mental structure, which need a deep understanding and accurate perception to facilitate the flow of investments, the success of deals, and the provision of a tourism product that takes into account the differentiation of cultures and the disparity of customs. It seems that the question of the introductory lesson was governed by a problematic approach that questions the thinking pattern of the Chinese person, and scrutinizes its quality, which is certainly special and different, and requires a treatment that takes into account its specificities.
I believe that the classical networks of analysis proposed by the various branches of the humanities and social sciences cannot be employed mechanically to understand the Chinese person. We may have needed to train dozens of people who know the hidden secrets of the Chinese mentality before hundreds of tour guides who are not only fluent in the Chinese language, but also imbued with the nature of the Chinese personality, its cultural specifics, and its mental patterns. Thus, we can win the bet in the relationship with an Asian giant in an economic, scientific and technical stage, benefit from its expertise in various fields, and actually win productive partnerships on a win-win basis.