The cover picture is from Chinese News Agency, Xinhua, featuring President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia in Southern Africa (third from right). He was on tour of the Kafue Bulk Water Supply Project in Lusaka Province, a project financed by the Export-Import Bank of China.
The fortune-telling significance of the picture lies in this context: Zambia is one of the heavily indebted African countries to China, arising mainly from Chinese funding of this sort of infrastructure.
The question is what does China do to Zambia and such other countries that cannot pay. As of now, China is not only promising debt relief for such countries, it has gone further to assist in making an IMF bailout for Zambia possible.
Observers of ‘China in Africa’ are both excited as well as curious what the gesture signals as far as China’s behaviour towards African defaulters could be.
There are still questions though. Would China do the same thin to every other African country that defaults in repayment? Would it be good or helpful for the Africans in terms of the need for them to transform beyond infrastructure provisioning into producers?
All these make this picture symbolic?
