Analyzing China's 40-Year Rise Out Of Poverty While Ghana Still Struggles After 68 Years Of Freedom

The People's Republic of China will celebrate its 76th anniversary of the creation of the state on October 1, 2025. The past 20 years have been especially noteworthy; China, which was a backwater agrarian nation sixty years ago, has transformed into a global power through economic miracles, but Ghana continues to face challenges after 68 years of independence. It's time to examine how China achieved economic independence within 40 years and what strategies it used to achieve this.

With an infant mortality rate of 200 per 1,000 live births in 1949, during the Chinese Revolution, China was among the world's poorest nations. However, by 1980, this number had dropped to less than 50. The vision and inaugural statement of Chairman Mao Zedong that "the Chinese people have stood up" became their inspiration. A 1988 World Bank study found that the health policies and the National Health Service delivery system could be attributed to much of China's success.

After sixty-eight years of independence, Ghana is still dealing with a lot of issues. A nation with all the resources, including gold, diamond, oil, and cocoa, has the potential to be a great nation, but falling behind in common basic infrastructure advances and hindered by a number of factors, including widespread corruption and ethnic politics. Therefore, I am unhappy if Ghana continues to struggle as a country while China rises out of poverty to become the largest economy in the world in forty years.

The Chinese government has long prioritized combating corruption, which is widely acknowledged as the primary cause of poverty and underdevelopment in much of the developing world. They have been successful in doing so by putting corrupt politicians in jail, such as the United States of America, or by demanding the offender’s resignation. However, in Ghana, the situation is different; corrupt leaders in the West African country continue to hold onto power while enjoying impunity for their crimes.

Deng Xiaoping started his reform and opening up campaign in 1978, prompting Chinese scientists to travel to nearly every country in the world, including the USA, Yugoslavia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Russia, to study. After learning from other nations and gaining much experience, the country utilized it and adopted its own model, which combines public and private interests, and approved five significant decisions to combat poverty.

Assistance to rural communities between 1978 and 1984 is one aspect of the reform. Household orders allowed the peasants to sell their goods to the government at set prices, with the surplus being distributed as the state saw fit. That's how a market economy started in 1984. New facets of the people's lives were impacted by the reforms that had been implemented. Road construction and water supply networks were funded, irrigation projects were subsidized, and villages with low living standards received specific financial aid, leading to the decrease of impoverished people.

In the year 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization and was permitted to actively expand overseas commercial contacts. This had a significant impact on how the external economy developed, and the country swiftly rose to the level of the global market. Compared to the latter years, when the data was only 18% to 20%, the export quota started to rise. The quota was nearly 36 percent in 2008, before the global crisis. To be the leader in the global economy, China has traded with every nation on the planet.

As patriotic Ghanaians, what can we gather from the success of China to make it in Ghana as a nation with such valuable resources? Keep in mind that China used strict measures to combat corruption in addition to sending its scientists to study how to succeed. Will the Ghanaian government permit corrupt politicians or the nation looters who are supposed to be imprisoned to live with impunity while they seek loans from the Chinese government? That is nothing more than stupidity?

China aims to prevent a potential labor shortage by enhancing and constructing new infrastructure, and this will positively impact the economy and international trade. As a result, the government of Ghana should take some lessons from their approach.