The TAZARA railway has assumed almost iconic status as a symbol of the first heroic stage of China’s involvement in Africa and an ideologically inspired symbol of anti-imperialist solidarity, in contrast with today’s more pragmatic and marketdriven Chinese engagement with the continent.

That was certainly how it was seen at the time it was built in the early 1970s. China came forward to build the railway and fund it with a US$450m loan after western donors – including the World Bank and the UN – rejected initial approaches to back the project.

The saga of the railway’s construction seems an almost archetypal tale of voluntarist Maoist heroism. It took only f i ve years to build and was f i nished ahead of schedule in 1975. Before construction work began, 12 Chinese surveyors traveled for nine months on foot from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya in the Southern Highlands to hack a path for the railway through the bush. Later some 50,000 Tanzanians and 25,000 Chinese toiled on the actual construction.

The most lasting effect on those involved was through the example of what Jamie Monson calls ‘the values of modernity and progress through the practice of self-discipline and hard work’. Modernity was experienced ‘not just through handling machinery in the foundry but in the form of working for a wage, a new experience for many of the young recruits, and following a work routine that was organized into hourly shifts’.

As she concludes; ‘Conventional assessments of TAZARA, which rely on large-scale, international and trans-regional indicators rather than small-scale, everyday traffic in goods and people, are typically unfavorable...We found that TAZARA has been an important resource for the development of a thriving entrepreneurial economy along the route from Kilsoa to Mbeya, in southern Tanzania. Today TAZARA connects local communities and provides farmers with the physical, social, and economic mobility they need to contend with rural Africa’s unpredictable economic conditions. And its successes – though unanticipated and hard to measure with any precision – may suggest some important lessons for economic development elsewhere’.

But the railway’s later economic and structural decay is often also seen as a parable of wider political and economic changes. The fall of the white supremacist regimes in Zimbabwe and South Africa reopened the Zambian copper belt’s earlier established rail and road links to the south, which TAZARA was intended to circumvent, and so lost it much of its prof i table traff i c.

Economic changes in Tanzania increased the economic pressures on the railway, at the same time as its Chinese sponsors were withdrawing from their earlier African involvement. And the dissolution of the Ujamaa villages planned and located along the route as part of Nyerere’s own brand of socialist vision only seemed to conf i rm the view of the railway as an inevitably decaying and predictably run-down relic of an earlier age.

Several leading companies and research institutes have been appointed by the Chinese government to investigate the current condition of the railway with a view to updating it.

Today, not far from the terminal of this railway in the streets of Dar es Salaam, Chinese and Tanzanian f l ags hang along the roads and huge signs are set up with a Chinese man's portrait and the word "Welcome" in Swahili. He is the man who might bring in more TAZARA railways and also more investment and opportunities to this region over the next few years — the newly elected Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is making his f i rst visit to three African countries as president.

Visiting Africa has been a tradition for a new Chinese leader to show friendship and comprehensive interconnectedness, but this time Xi is not just coming as a gesture but with a program to tackle many challenges that lie ahead for the two nations.

Integration, industrialization, peace and security, as well as sustainable development,are all buzzwords in African countries. They also could be the guidelines for China's engagement in Africa if China wants its interests there to be more efficient and sustainable.

Luckily, China has never been the sole dominant force in this relationship and has shown a strong willingness to support Africa's own agenda. But where this relationship is leading depends on the extent to which both sides can achieve mutual benef i t across all f i elds.

China is not the only international player in Africa. Traditional players from the West still have a huge impact on Africa's social progress. Competition also comes from emerging markets such as India and Brazil, which is a good thing for the continent because it gives Africa more leverage in choosing what really benef i ts it.

To solidify its achievement and role in Africa, China should continue being a strong supporter of African home-grown solutions and "African dreams", say observers.

For instance, as deeper integration among African countries utilizing a more connected continental transportation network has risen to the top of the agenda of many governments that want to enhance intra-border trade and communications, China and Chinese companies are eager to join these efforts to further support Africa's aspirations.

熱門詞匯：

● anti-imperialist n.反帝國主義者；adj.反帝國主義的

● pragmatic adj. 實際的，重實效的

● archetypal adj.原型的

● surveyor n.測量員，檢驗員

● entrepreneurial adj.企業(yè)家的，商業(yè)的

● parable n. 寓言，迷，比喻

● relic n. 遺物，廢墟，遺跡

● interconnectedness n. 相通性，相關(guān)性

● integration n.整合，集合，完成

● solidify v. 使團結(jié)起來，凝固，變堅強