South Africa and China signed agreements worth R94 billion, shortly after Chinese president Xi Jinping arrived for a state visit in Pretoria, President Jacob Zuma said on Wednesday.
Advertisement
The people of Zimbabwe are now rejoicing over Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit, branding him a “savior” who will save the country’s faltering economy by bringing in million of dollars in investments.
Vice Presidents Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko, service chiefs and several senior Government officials were also at the airport to bid farewell to the Chinese leader.
The Chinese President Xi Jinping has signed 10 investment deals with Zimbabwe on Tuesday evening, pledging to continue cooperating with the investment-hungry country as it attempts to reverse a prolonged economic meltdown.
“China and South Africa relations are at a new historical level”.
In the coming days, President Xi will meet with other African leaders in Johannesburg for a forum on Africa-China relations.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari will ask Xi to fund rail and power projects urgently needed to diversify an economy hit hard by a plunge in oil prices, a spokesman said.
China is Africa’s largest trading partner and the trade volume between them amounted to $220 billion in 2014, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua. “We agreed that more could and should be done to increase our trade and investment figures”.
He further said he had asked China to cooperate with South Africa in the field of hydro and renewable energy. The trade deficit Africa has with China is a problem and the nation will try to import as much as possible to improve the balance, Qian said. China has also, for the first time, contributed a full battalion of troops to a United Nations peacekeeping mission, sending 700 soldiers to join the UNMISS operation in South Sudan.
But analysts cautioned that “as China’s economy slows, and rebalances from investment-driven growth to consumption, so too will its demand for resources” and added that this could harm political regimes in Africa that now largely depended on Chinese resource-extraction centred deals.
Xi was welcomed on Wednesday afternoon with a 21-gun salute at the Union Buildings.
Zimbabweans are expecting to see the mega deals signed by Harare and China trickle down to the people in the grassroots and eventually change their lives for the better. “Over the past 17 years, our friendship and co-operation has grown from a small boat to a big vessel, riding the wind and waves and forging ahead towards greater mutual benefit and common development”, Xi wrote in an article in The Star, one of South Africa’s leading newspapers.
Advertisement
Use IOL’s Facebook and Twitter pages to comment on our stories.
