How Tanzania Can Escape a Poverty Trap; Lesson From China

Abstract

Nowadays, the success story of china’s great leap from feeble socialist state to hegemonic world producer and great USA and Africans countries creditor amazes a lot of scholars. In 1980 china’s GDP per capital was only 193 US dollar which similar that of African countries like chad and Malawi and Asian like Bangladesh and Chinese people did not eat more or better food prior 1980s while politically, China’s CCP regime was extremely dictatorial (in a sense of western democracy model). Three decades later china became the world’s second economies and her GDP grew from USD 193 to USD 6,091 by 2012 leaving other countries like chad, Malawi and Bangladeshi far behind. What happened during this thirty years of china’s great leap and what lesson does it give to African countries like Tanzania? This article tries to see some useful hints that made Chinese economy to take off and what lesson can African countries like Tanzania learn from this transformation “great leap process”. The reason beyond this success story owes not to good governance as a prelude to development nor history as a factor for underdevelopment, coevolution between the state and society was a vital force. The article provides a suggestion on Tanzania economic development must first utilize resources she has to stimulate industrial and agriculture sectors. This article draws lesson from Ang’s Y. Y literature how china escaped poverty trap.

Keywords: Tanzania, Escape, Poverty trap, China

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/11-24-07

Publication date: December 31^st 2020