Recently I watched a feature that centred on China’s burgeoning car manufacturing industry. I was amazed at the super-high levels of automation. Believe it, there is a company, the Great Wall Motor Company, which is so highly automated that the machines/robots have the capability to assemble a new car, every 72 seconds.

They are not making “dibby dibby” or low-quality motor vehicles. These are, in the main, top-of-the-line productions for global consumers who demand very good quality. Incidentally, the mentioned company is one of several in China. Can any Western country seriously compete with China’s high levels and exponentially increasing pace of automation and digitalisation?

For many years China was seen as a mass producer of cheap knock-offs and inferior goods. China was also seen as the epicentre of cheap labour, if not slave labour. Some human rights advocates said Chinese factories, on the whole, were sweatshops reminiscent of the deadly abuses of Victorian England, the period of Queen Victoria’s reign over Great Britain and Ireland, from 1837 to 1901, also marked by rapid change. Are those claims still valid?

THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE

Ponder this: “There is confusion about China. Let me at least give you my opinion. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labour cost. I am not sure what part of China they go to. But the truth is, China stopped being the low labour cost country many years ago. The reason is because of the skill; the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is. Like the products, we do require really advanced tooling. And the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the material that we do are state-of-the-art. And the tooling skill is very deep here [China]. In the United States you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I am not sure you could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. The vocational expertise is very, very deep here.” (Tim Cook, CEO, Apple Inc)

It is important that we learn from good examples of success. Note, I did not say Jamaica should ape what successful countries do. That aside, I am astonished that a country, which up to 1978 was considered as backward, is today a global leader in automation and digitalisation. This is a mighty transformation.

Consider this, too, from a April 1, 2022 World Bank press release titled ‘Lifting 800 million people out of poverty — new report looks at lessons from China’s experience’: “Over the past 40 years the number of people in China with incomes below US$1.90 per day — the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty — has fallen by close to 800 million. With this China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. At China’s current national poverty line, the number of poor fell by 770 million over the same period.”

No modern economy started out with a majority of high-end, high-paying jobs. None! The rise up the ladder is an incremental and painstaking process that is linked to improvements in national levels of education and training, security, commercial and judicial advances, institutional-building and upgrades, plus the full utilisation of cultural and especially geographical advantages.

Forty-seven years ago China adopted massive economic reforms under the able leadership of Deng Xiaoping and his reformists. There was a paradigm shift from a centrally planned, socialist economy towards a more market-oriented system. But important guard rails were also incorporated to ensure that the so-called invisible hand of the market did not wave in only one direction.

As consequence of the reforms by Deng Xiaoping foreign investments in and trade with China mushroomed, meaningful economic growth followed alongside these developments, living standards massively improved, and today China is a global power.

Integral to China’s meteoric economic rise was a simultaneous rise in national standards of education. The tectonic-like innovations at the Great Wall Motor Company, for example, are largely the results of four decades of investments in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). STEM is the wave of the future.

‘WOE IS ME/WE!’

Now, I know that some who subscribe to the “woe is me” school and some who suffer with a genuine lack of knowledge are going shout: “But, Higgins, China, is a country with 1.4 billion people, and China has natural resources like petroleum, iron ore, zinc, lead, copper, natural gas, huge oil reserves, tin, timber, fisheries, and more. So how can we really learn anything from China’s economic successes?”

One of the surest ways for a country to never achieve its full potential is for it to be consumed with ignorance of its own advantages. Recall the Parable of the Talents, recorded in Matthew 25: 14-30. Remember, the servant that was given one talent was depicted as having a great fear for his master. That servant perceived his master as hard and demanding. He hid the entrusted talent instead of investing it, resulting in his master condemning him as wicked and slothful. This story can be interpreted as a lesson about using God-given talents and resources wisely, not out of fear or complacency, but in a way that brings about growth and development, personally and also nationally.

So, by this reasoning, if a country wants to persistently underachieve it can best do so by consistently consoling itself with the false notion that its talents are useless. There is always a plausible argument for doing nothing and changing nothing. We must remember, though, that “if nothing changes, nothing changes”. This is a proven formula for personal failure and national underachievement.

Throughout history, the countries that have climbed from the depths of economic, social, and political despair and sustained their escape have all disposed of the ‘woe is me,’ or ‘woe is we,’ millstone from around their necks and brains.

Anyway, for those who insist that China’s resources make it a bad example to learn economic lessons/successes from, I give them Singapore.

This is a country about the size of St Thomas parish here at home. She has none of the natural resources of China or Jamaica. In the early 60s Singaporeans were lambasted as denizens of a malaria-invested island. It had massive racial tensions and riots particularly in 1964 and 1969. Singapore also had a big challenge with corruption and related problems.

In 2024 Singapore’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was estimated to be US$89,369.71. The GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), was estimated to be US$104,127, according to World Economics.

Singapore today is one of the least corrupt countries in the world, according to international benchmarks. Its infrastructures, social, physical and related, are first-rate.

How did Singapore achieve developed status in less than 50 years? With the visionary leadership of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister and a team of like-minded patriots, they discarded the burdens of ‘woe is me’ and efficiently employed the talents which they were blessed with — the people.

Lee Kuan Yew focused on education, particularly STEM, and English was recognised as the lingua franca. In 1960, Singapore’s adult literacy rate was 52.6 per cent. Today the Programme for International Student Assessment, a worldwide study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranks Singapore as a top performer in reading, mathematics, science, and also creative thinking.

There is scholarship which supports the position that Deng Xiaoping borrowed from Lee Kuan Yew’s growth and development template and tailored it to the needs of China.

I expect some are going to shout: “Hold up there, Higgins, these are all Chinese-type peoples. We cannot compare our talents to theirs?”

Really?!

Those among us who subscribe to the hugely self-destructive view that the destiny of black people is to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water” are their own worst enemies. If you have no confidence in yourself you are twice defeated in the race of life, said Jamaican National Hero Marcus Garvey. I agree.

For those buried in self-sabotage, here is a country with people who look like us, and live in similar climes, who have risen from social, economic, and political ashes also in less than 50 years.

In 1994, over a span of just 100 days, some 800,000 individuals were slaughtered in the genocide in Rwanda. Since that horrific event they have “dusted themselves off, lifted themselves up, and started all over again”. Today Rwandans are the leaders in STEM in East Africa and their economy is growing really fast.

HERE AT HOME

Recall that Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness had declared Jamaica a “STEM island with a vision of fostering innovation, driving economic growth, and empowering our people to thrive in the global knowledge economy” almost a year ago today when he spoke at the opening ceremony of the Future Ready International Conference hosted by 21stCentEd, a Comprehensive STEM™ education systems Jamaican-led company based in the United States, which hosted the international conference in partnership with University of Technology, Jamaica.

Some then and now have scoffed at the prime minister’s declaration and the attendant efforts that have been and are being made to realise the objective of Jamaica becoming a STEM island.

“Wait there, Higgins, hold on there, what efforts are you talking about? After nothing not going on to really improve STEM in Jamaica. Is just chat, Holness did ah chat.” I expect that some are going splash this default reaction. It is not difficult to figure why some have that automatic response.

But, there are some who are genuinely not aware because of various reasons. Those of us who have the knowledge have a duty to help our brothers and sisters who honestly don’t know.

Holness, in his most recent budget speech presentation, among other things, noted that: “Jamaica is embracing the future by investing heavily in STEM and AI education to prepare our youth for the Digital Age. HEART/NSTA Trust is launching a $400-million initiative to establish state-of-the-art STEAM labs, integrating creative industries into the STEM framework.”

Last August, while speaking at the annual Primary Exit Profile (PEP) awards function, Holness informed that financing was being put in place to construct six STEM schools across the country. He noted that: “These schools will not be run under the current education system in terms of the Education Act. We will develop a new scheme of managing those schools because, for us, it is a strategically important programme. We need to create very quickly, very rapidly, with guarantees, a generation of Jamaicans who are highly trained in STEM. This is a national priority.”

All these critical efforts are undergirded by the ongoing transformation of our education system in accordance with the report of the Jamaica Education Transformation Commission (JETC) that was chaired by Professor Orlando Patterson. An Education Transformation Oversight Committee (ETOC) was established to oversee the implementation of recommendations from the JETC report.

ETOC’s work focuses on improving various aspects of the education system, including governance, accountability, and the quality of teaching and learning. ETOC is chaired by accomplished senior business executive Dr Adrian Stokes. Numerous stakeholders serve on ETOC. By way of full disclosure, I serve on ETOC.

“Cho, Higgins, all the Government does is set up committees that do no work,” some will shout. ETOC also has a steering subcommittee, the workhorse that is also made up of stakeholders. We meet on Thursdays, rain or shine, at 8:00 am. Here the direction, progression, etc of the transformation project are rigorously assessed and discussed.

“Higgins, dat is just ah likkle eat a food ting,” some will howl. I am not paid.

ETOC has a quarterly press conference, where the public is given the ‘full hundred’, as we say in the streets, with regard to the implementation of the JETC recommendations. Another quarterly press conference will be held on April 22.

The implementation details of the transformation project are on the website of the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth, and Information in a reader-friendly format. China, Vietnam, Singapore, Poland, Rwanda, and many other countries are reaping handsome dividends from heavy investments in STEM. They all started small.

As we say in local parlance, “Nuh baby nuh born a adult,” and “Yuh haffi creep before yuh walk.” If others can do it, Jamaica can too. We are not lesser beings.

Garfield Higgins is an educator, and journalist. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.

Lee Kuan Yew

China has super-high levels of automation with machines and robots.

GARVEY… without confidence in yourself you are twice defeated in the race of life.

Deng Xiaoping