Dear Editor,
I hold no brief for the Republic of China, but I wish to point out that what the Government of China has done for the African continent within the last 30 years, the former colonising powers in that area failed to do in over 300 years of occupation. If properly handled, China could also do for Guyana within the next decade what our quondam masters had failed to do for our country in over 300 years of occupation that, inter alia, included enslavement, indentured servitude, slaughter, rape and ethnic humiliation. We ought therefore to be extremely cautious in relation to the Baishanlin situation and not be goaded unduly by the statements of a forensic auditor. In my considered opinion, the primary fault in this unravelling scenario rests squarely upon the unscrupulous shoulders of a lawless past administration that condoned wrong. Otherwise, how was it possible or permissible for the Forestry Commission, the regulatory authority, to endorse such gross dereliction of state responsibilities in the monitoring of this foreign company for over eight consecutive years? This certainly gives much credence to the perception that the laws in Guyana are not made for the small man, and that becoming a real man is still an ever-vanishing chimera after 50 years of national Independence.
Guyana needs China and China perhaps needs Guyana as its gateway to South American states. We ought rather to focus on the far bigger financial and economic issues of encouraging the Government of China to establish a railway network linking Guyana with Brazil and the rest of the South American continent by way of high-speed trains as they are now doing in Africa. And we need to have them build a deep-water harbour to enable two-way trade between China and the South American continent via Guyana. If we lapse, they might turn to our Suriname neighbour as an alternative.
It is high time Guyana thinks big and realizes that nothing is impossible in this hyper electronic age, that has reduced the world to a mere village through globalization. These ventures in combination could, in the final analysis, generate over 100,000 jobs for Guyanese and Chinese. We very often fail to remember, that the Chinese have lived with us in Guyana ever since they came here in the 19th century, ostensibly to fill the gap for sugar plantation labour after the abolition of slavery. And we also tend to forget that our first President was a Chinese from Windsor Forest, West Coast Demerara ‒ Mr Arthur Chung of revered memory. It is now high time for Guyana to shift gear from Baishanlin and Joe Harmon and fast forward to higher levels, thus ensuring our socio-economic emancipation and “the good life for all”, that must never be an ever-vanishing chimera.
Yours faithfully,
R O Bostwick
