Wake Up Call: Chinese Ambassador Is Right

This week, Ghanaians received a rude awakening from the Chinese ambassador to Ghana Mr Shi Ting Wang in a single statement of wisdom and of undiluted facts.

Listen to Mr Ting Wang on Chinese illegal mining activities in Ghana:

‘’We don’t know where your gold is. We don’t issue visas to Chinese people who come to Ghana. Ghanaians issue the visas. Ghanaians aid the Chinese to where they can find your gold. Why are the Chinese people not doing illegal mining in South Africa where they also have more gold?..it is because the locals there don’t support such illegalities’’.

This is a wall nail straight into the thick skulls of we Ghanaians and our misleaders. We really need this wall nail from Mr Ting Wang to wake us up from our deep slumber and stop needlessly blaming the Chinese for what we ourselves must take full responsibility for.

The Chinese ambassador to Ghana is saying in simple common sense language that Ghana is a lawless country whose governments and citizens facilitate the commission of a crime by foreigners for their mutual personal gains at the expense of the state of Ghana and its greater good. And that some Chinese people are simply taking advantage of this Ghanaian culture of lawlessness and self-destruction.

Ghanaians issue visas to the Chinese illegal miners. Ghanaians issue permits for the importation of the heavy-duty equipment required by the Chinese for their illegal mining activities in Ghana. Ghanaians lead the Chinese to gold deposits and the chiefs and government officials who look the other way after taking bribes.

And even when the Chinese residents in Ghana are arrested and accused of a crime, it is Ghanaian public officials who discontinue the case to please the Chinese. The senior minister of the Ghanaian government has openly endorsed the practice. The Chinese government did not request the Ghana government to recently deport a Chinese illegal miner Aisha Wuang. It was decided, uninfluenced, by the Ghanaian government ministery of justice and attorney - general. It seems the Ghanaian government has developed low self-esteem before the Chinese government whiles pretending to Ghanaians that they are fighting illegal mining.

This is why the statement from the Chinese Ambassador makes the country's national culture look utterly weak on the geopolitical stage. Some Ghanaians have described the ambassador’s comments as insults. Those who get the drift also describe it as ‘’ deserving insults’’.

To paraphrase Dr Amos Anyimadu, one of Ghana’s sages; description, no matter how well done, is not a definition. So: I say the Chinese ambassador spoke the whole truth. No matter how you describe it, it doesn't change the truth. And if this truth is too bitter for us, we are not obliged to chew on it. We can just simply swallow it.

But here is the clear difference between the Chinese and we Ghanaians: Chinese have a strong national and cultural identity which propels and compels their principled educated elites to work only in the supreme interest of the Chinese dynasty/empire and its people at home and abroad.

Over 90% of Chinese are of the same ethnicity, speak the same language under one communist party government. All they think about first is the greater good of China, the empire. That’s the mindset that developed China. It is the same mindset that is leading China in their new global hegemonic economic conquests.

We-the-Ghanaians have a weak national and cultural identity(that’s if we have one at all) which produces a corrupt educated elite with allegiance to tribal/ethnic, partisan political groupings and their personal economic and family interests.

In other words, Ghanaians are educated to aim at and facilitate the accumulation of personal wealth, first for ourselves, family and friends, our tribesmen and clansmen, political party affiliates, etc at the expense of Ghana and the greater good. That is how we obtain celebrity status in Ghana - shamelessly. We have become more individualistic than the Westerners who invented individualism. And this is why we are underdeveloped and still feeding on crumbs.

I am not advocating that Ghana should become a communist state. I am advocating that Ghanaian leaders also advocate and shape a strong national and cultural identity. It has to be a vision of the future that the people will all share - like the ''Creedal identity'' to make the Ghanaian people proud of themselves within a growing liberal democracy.

Source: Sacut Amenga-Etego (Journalist & Activist)