Mariam Mariam
For a first time visitor to Guangzhou, China (the last time that I was in this city, was 13 years ago, in 2013), it’s probably the first place to visit. The area is called Tong Tong; commercial, bustling, and a huge reflection of Nigerian and African enterprise, but mainly, Nigerian.
I got a recommendation from a frequent visitor to go there, as soon as I arrived. Well, I left Abuja on June 1st , 2026, and after the lay over in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as I was flying Ethiopian Airlines, I chose to rest the whole of the first day in Guangzhou.
But in China, a few things hit you immediately, as a first time visitor. I’m not. I’ve been to China several times, since I began visiting early in the 2000s. However, those familiar with my story know that I didn’t come here, or go to any other destination, because my passport had been seized for seven years, as part of a trial.
The checklist of the first things to do here is standard: buy a China SIM card; install VPN facilities to be able to access sites that ordinarily are not available here, but which we take for granted back home; and to install Alipay payment platforms.
In China, most payments: to hail a taxi, purchase goods, settle bills, order for Nigerian food, etc., are all done by scanning bar codes. It is the most cashless society on earth, , China.
So, there he was in a corner of the shopping area in Tong Tong. I didn’t quite get his name, but everyone calls him “Biggy”, and believe me, he looks the part! He came highly recommended, because he’s the go-to person for everything that I listed about communication in Guangzhou.
He also operates what might be called a Bureau De Change. You easily get Naira you can pay him to download Nigerian Afro beats songs; so there’s usually a reasonable queue of people around him, all in search of the services that he provides.
Biggy told me that he has been in Guangzhou since 2007. He travels back to Nigeria at the end of each year, then stays at home for the next three months, before returning to his business life in China.
Tong Tong tells the incredible story of Chinese and African enterprise, as the two sides mingle and relate attracted by the economic opportunities which the success of China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” has opened up in the past four decades.
At Tong Tong, with its mix of wholesalers/retailers; shoppers and hustlers, that combined experience of China (Chungua) and Africa (Frijo), can’t be missed and it’s therefore, very impressive indeed. There’s also the unmistakable reality that this is mainly an Eastern Nigerian setting. We must give it to our Igbo compatriots, they’re completely “soaked” into ‘business’. It’s a spectacle watching the chap called “Biggy” in his elements. Same goes for several other individuals.
The setting reminds me of what Professor Okwudiba Nnoli had underlined in his seminal book on Ethnic Politics in Nigeria. He underscored the ecological, population, and sociological reasons why the Igbo had to go out in search of economic success. When China opened up to the world, Guangzhou became a new economic frontier for our intrepid brothers from across the River Niger!
Tong Tong, Biggy, the bustling market scenes, along with the throng of humans going by each day, and the spirit of enterprise here, became a backdrop for my visit to China. It should be stated that this is my first visit since 2018. In the two years, 2026 to 2018, while still serving as DG of the National Broadcasting Commission, I attended the international digital broadcasting conferences that Star Times used to host in Beijing.
I worked the China connections and received an invitation to China, and that partly explains my return to China. The second leg of my trip is entrepreneurial. Our company, Word, Sound & Vision (WSV) Multimedia Limited requires a new level of equipment, within the context of our reopening and the exploration of newer frontiers. For these, China is the place to come to.
This country stuns the visiting entrepreneur with the dazzling array of the technologies available in practically every field of human endeavour. It is not for nothing that China today is the workshop of the world! It graduates the highest number of engineers annually, and has put tremendous resources into new technologies, AI, as well as the mind-boggling infrastructure.
When I began to visit at the commencement of the new millennium, China was always in the news in the Western media for the scary levels of pollution arising from the early forms of industrialization. I recall that there used to be the overhang of polluted smog in Beijing. These went along with the CO2 emissions of vehicles on the streets.
But China is China: central economic planning, the state directing development, five year development plans, people-centred development, science and technology in the development process, AI, no foreign wars or the invasions of other countries, along with building partnerships around the world. This is the strong basis upon which China has continued to project its phenomenal growth and development.
China pulled out over 800 million people out of poverty, a feat that is unique in human history. What struck me, and it was in fact what I had noticed in my previous visits in the past, is that each new year the country posts changes that one can see with every visit. The people can genuinely feel these changes in their lives!
When I last visited in 2018, there used to be a lot more foreign-branded vehicles on the streets of the various cities. Over the years, I have been in Beijing, Shanghai, Ningbo, Qindao, Wuhu, Hefei, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, amongst other cities, several times. From the airport drive into the city to get to my hotel, I noticed a preponderance of Chinese made vehicles, and these were always electric vehicles of all sizes and shapes: from modest sedans to high end four-wheelers.
Internal combustion engine vehicles that guzzle petrol carry blue number plates, while the environmentally- friendlier electric cars are recognized with their eco-friendly green number plates. The different brands, names, and shapes of these vehicles, and their abundance on the well-paved streets of the city of Guangzhou speak to the success of the policy of the Chinese government to transition to eco-friendly choices in several areas of human endeavour. Underlining these endeavours, is the respect for the livelihood of the Chinese people.
Over the next week, my life in Guangzhou was set around issues of entrepreneurial explorations as well as taking in the sights and sounds of a Cantonese city long renowned as a place of business success. That is reflected in the culture of the market place here. The Chinese slap a huge cost on a good, then the customer begins to haggle over cost during which a two-way back and forth issues, until the two parties reach an agreement on a satisfactory cost. It’s just like a Nigerian or African marketplace!
I’m headed for Beijing, the Chinese capital, after my days in Guangzhou. The distance between the two destinations is 2,140km, and for the trip, I chose to go by train. It won’t be a complete visit to China if I don’t experience high-speed travel by rail in China. I have been a long-term advocate of a very modern, national railway system for Nigeria. China just reinforced my belief!
I checked out of Langham Place that’s been my residence in the week that I had been in Guangzhou. But there was a small piece of business that I still had to transact at Tong Tong. I hailed a cab that was to take me there, and wait for me to drop off stuff I wanted air freighted to Abuja.
When I called the logistics company’s representative, he told me that they hadn’t opened for the day. Business seemed to open by 10am. So what would I do with my luggage? The Nigerian chap assured me that I could drop my stuff by their office, take a picture and go. When I expressed worry, he answered: “Sir, this is China. Nothing will happen to your luggage”!
I joined the waiting taxi for the drive to the Guangzhou West railway station. That’s the point of embarkation for the high speed train to Beijing. The expansive railway station looked and felt more like a modern international airport, and the security check flagged my broadcast drone as well as perfumes. They’re not allowed on the train!
I had two options; allow these goods to be taken away from me or I could hail a cab to get the goods back to Tong Tong. And that’s what I eventually did, and before boarding the train, I got a call that my drone and perfumes had been delivered for freighting to Nigeria!
The train journey to Beijing lasted eight hours. The train was very neat and fast, and onboard, I bought a meal of rice, chicken, vegetables, a Pepsi Cola and water. Things worked like clockwork and almost to the minute, we arrived at the Beijing West railway station at 2245hrs.
Over the next couple of days, I was able to hold a lunch meeting with the Chairman of Star Times, Mr. Pang, who I had hosted during my days at the NBC. His company also invited me in the past, to participate in the annual international conference in broadcast digitization. I visited several technical sites to be further educated on Chinese scientific inventions, and in the process to also behold the incredible developments around the city of Beijing.
I recall that when I began to visit China at the beginning of the new millennium, a major issue that used to dominate media reportage was the pollution that cast a pall on Beijing. A combination of CO2 emissions from vehicles, as well as from the rapid industrialization kept Beijing within the persistent negative framings of the Western media.
China has always found a way to respond to its challenges. Today, it leads the world in green energy and the deployment of electric vehicles. Beijing is considerably cleaner than hitherto. China’s rapid growth has sparked a consumerist boom amongst the population. The throng of shoppers in the different malls and market places cannot be missed, and the younger people can be seen either buying or sizing up trendy outfits and other consumer goods.
The Chinese Communist Party has deployed the market into service, for the development of the productive forces of the country. The result is what is termed “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. There are leftwing circles around the world that argue against the road that China took to arrive as the most industrialized country on earth.
Contemporary China, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, that is still rooted in the working class and the peasantry, pulled over 800 million people out of poverty since 1978, according to the statistics of the World Bank, a feat that’s unequalled in human history. They have turned China into a modern country, that in real terms has become, arguably, the most important country in the world. Modern China reflects the incredible advantages of a developmental state, where a planned economy is the central economic engine of growth, where the private sector exists and thrives, but has not been allowed to become the dominant force of societal development.
The conditions of the working people have continued to witness incredible improvements in China. Extreme poverty has been eliminated; essentially, socialist China has ended homelessness; there is an ideological commitment to what is described as “common prosperity”; life expectant has risen continuously in the 77 years since the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, by the Chinese Communist Party.
These improvements have been by far, the largest and most impressive transformations in human welfare in history. It is also important to underline the fact that poverty alleviation in China does not just mean $2.10 a day income, as the poverty line is defined by the IMF and the World Bank.
In China, there are the “seven guarantees”: housing; modern energy (electricity or gas piped into homes); access to clean water; dignified clothing; nutritious diet; a minimum of ten years of education that’s guaranteed and is free; access to healthcare. It is an incredible achievement to guarantee all these for a population of 1.4 billion people!
As a result of all the developments, life expectancy has improved from around 35 years in 1949, at the time of the liberation of China, and to over 79 years now. Part of the current five year development plan, is that life expectancy will reach at least 80 years. Remarkably, even as it is now, Chinese life expectancy is higher than in the United States, the richest imperialist country in human history!
Literacy went from around 10-15 percent in 1949, to functionally, 100 percent today. There’s universal healthcare coverage, universal free education, and near-universal home ownership. More than 90 percent of the Chinese people own their own homes, and the vast majority of these without a mortgage. These are the concrete achievements of the socialist system in the People’s Republic of China.
It was the African revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral, who once posited the fact that no one makes sacrifices (in the struggle for liberation) for ideas in people’s heads. They strive to improve their material and spiritual circumstances. The Chinese Communists have deepened development, not just of the productive forces of their country, they remarkably improved the material lives of the Chinese people, and their spiritual lives, in such vital areas as sports, leisure, the arts and culture, they’re posting incredible successes too.
The late Chinese leader, Deng Xiao Ping, famously remarked that it didn’t matter that a cat was black or white, as long as it catches mice. Leaning on the 5000-year history of China, their experience of struggle against Japanese fascism, Chinese warlords, and other reactionary forces, the Chinese have built impressive successes that influence the contemporary world, placing China at the very heart of the consolidating multipolar world order.
It came as no surprise, when President Xi Jiping, on March 21, 2023, told his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, that they (China and Russia) are driving changes unseen in 100 years. That statement reflects the confidence of a president who knows the important place that his country now occupies in the contemporary world order.
Beijing, China.
Sunday, June 14th, 2026.
Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, PhD., FNGE, isa broadcaster, journalist, and political scientist.
