Wider development
For developing countries, the opportunities range from buying affordable products to acquiring skills and building industries, the experts said. They pointed to technology sharing, vocational training and a wider choice of partners as ways China's industrial progress could support other countries' development.
Former Ethiopian president Mulatu Teshome has watched that progress since arriving in China as a student in the 1970s, when the economy depended much more heavily on agriculture and light industry.
Chinese companies that once competed largely on low costs now offer higher-quality products and more advanced technology, he told China Daily.
Electric vehicles are a challenge to industries built around internal combustion engines, he acknowledged. But Chinese high-tech products also represent "a very good opportunity" for developing economies and European countries, he said.
China's experience showed that industrialization could follow paths suited to each country's circumstances, Mulatu said. Cooperation based on mutual respect and equality supported that freedom of choice, he argued, contrasting it with conditions attached to some international financial assistance.
He identified electric vehicles, clean energy, robotics and the digital economy as areas for cooperation. Wider market access and tariff-free treatment could also open trade channels for developing countries, he said.
Satomi Alhaji Ahmad, a member of Nigeria's House of Representatives, said: "We have never seen China as a threat. We see China as a friend."
He emphasized the benefits affordable Chinese products provided to ordinary consumers. A Chinese-made watch costing 100 yuan could meet the same basic need as a far more expensive one, he said.
He also pointed to knowledge sharing, vocational training, agricultural technology and rail infrastructure as forms of cooperation African countries could draw on to strengthen their own capabilities. "China is showing you how to catch the fish," he said.
Glenn Diesen, a professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway, said the emergence of several technological powers could give smaller and medium-sized economies more choices.
Competition among suppliers could help them diversify technology sources, obtain expertise and seek technology transfers, while stronger cooperation among developing countries could expand those opportunities, he said.
Learning from China does not mean reproducing its model wholesale, he cautioned. Its scale, extensive supply chains and industrial capabilities are distinctive advantages. Other countries need approaches suited to their own circumstances, including greater autonomy in strategic industries and more diversified trade.
