It is an understatement to say that perceptions of China are complicated, from the ground up to the highest levels. For instance, from our work with African fashion designers, we know that, due to stereotypes about communist societies, many Africans think Chinese people dress the same and have very conservative dress codes. The truth could not be further from this imagining.
Similarly, from our work with African economists, we also know that China is often perceived as a monolithic, homogeneous whole, governed through a highly efficient yet interventionist and top-down system that enables goods, capital and businesses to move seamlessly across the country.
But again, the reality is not the same as the imagination.
While China’s ability to coordinate between national and local governments, as well as between the state and society, is indeed strong by global standards, this outcome was not immediate nor was it automatic.
Integrating a country spanning 9.6m square kilometres with vast differences in geography, industrial capacity and levels of development across 34 provinces presented technical and governance complexities comparable to those faced by a continent of 55 countries and just didn’t work.
For the vast majority of China’s modern development and poverty reduction years – especially from 1978 onwards – local governments in China were evaluated primarily on their ability to drive economic growth, employment and fiscal revenue within their own jurisdictions. At the same time, China placed substantial expenditure responsibilities on local authorities, creating strong incentives to cultivate and protect local sources of revenue. While these incentives helped drive local development, they also encouraged governments to favour local firms and industries.
As a result, businesses seeking to expand across provincial boundaries often encountered explicit and implicit barriers to market entry. They would have to establish local subsidiaries, pay deposits, or comply with market access requirements not imposed on local competitors. Procurement processes sometimes had preferential evaluation criteria for local firms.In this sense, “non-tariff barriers” emerged within the country. A term, “beheaded roads”, emerged to describe transport links that stop at administrative boundaries because neighbouring jurisdictions failed to coordinate planning, standards or construction timelines – a cross-border trend that we are all too familiar with on the African continent.
The Chinese government spent a long time absorbing these costs – because the pros of the provincial growth targets outweighed them. But finally, as late as 2022, the central government of China introduced a “unified national market” reform framework. It came amid rising external uncertainty and global supply chain restructuring, with the objective of strengthening domestic demand and improving the internal circulation of goods, capital and resources.
China’s reform agenda
While the full framework is extensive and implementation varies across regions, the agenda can be summarised in three interconnected areas, the first two of which look extremely familiar to anyone who has done any work related to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), trading under which came into force in 2021, a year prior to China’s reforms.
The first of these is unifying rules. This establishes a clear, consistent set of nationwide regulations on market access, property rights, competition and enforcement, so firms face the same “rules of the game” wherever they operate.
Second, enabling smooth production factor flows. The aim is to remove barriers to the movement of capital, labour, data and enterprises. Measures include streamlining inter-regional business registration, easing mobility restrictions and more.
Third, improving infrastructure connectivity. This covers both physical networks, such as highways and logistics and digital/data infrastructure – dealing with those beheaded roads, for instance, and even adding high-speed rail routes alongside some of them.
This third part is what Africa is lacking, due to the unavailability of cheap, large-scale finance on the continent, which, we argue, just by the maths, must come from external sources.
These reforms provided huge, quick wins. The Suzhou–Taizhou Expressway, completed in 2025 in the Yangtze River Delta – one of China’s most economically dynamic regions – is one great example. The neighbouring provinces coordinated technical standards, construction schedules and cross-boundary interfaces to ensure seamless connectivity. The impact translated into lower business costs: one stainless steel processor transporting products across provincial borders reduced logistics costs by nearly 10% per tonne after the route opened.
China’s emphasis was also on enforcing accountability rather than deregulating or issuing broad guidance alone. In 2023 alone – the first year after the release of the framework – relevant authorities jointly reviewed 9,119 policy measures, issued 1,155 rectification recommendations and oversaw the revision or abolition of approximately 17,600 policies violating fair competition.
The cumulative effects were visible in trade patterns. In 2025, inter-provincial trade sales grew by 4.5% year-on-year and accounted for 41% of national sales. Firms increasingly served customers beyond their home provinces. Production networks were better integrated allowing sourcing, manufacturing and consumption to occur across multiple regions.
Cheap capital is critical
What, then, can Africa take from this experience?
Yes, Africa is not a country, as China is. But we hope we have made it clear that until very recently, China operated in a way that is much closer to African conditions than many might imagine. This means that while integration should not be seen as a panacea for development, it does on the other hand require two necessary complementary actions, and together these and integration can lead to further growth and development, endogenously.
The first is that cheap capital for truly cross-border infrastructure is critical. With cheap capital, Africa can leapfrog China. We already have some equivalents of “beheaded roads”, but we need to develop new financial instruments for shared, cross-border infrastructure projects, that pool cross-border risk rather than cumulate it. These will then automatically build in harmonised technical standards and interoperable digital systems across country borders, leading to China-style efficiency now.
The second is that targets matter. China managed to grow fast despite the cross-provincial barriers because of growth targets. African governments, like the provincial governments, must relentlessly pursue high growth targets now.
Eventually, in time, like China, we can introduce more complex performance assessments so that, in addition to delivering growth within their own jurisdictions, governments are also evaluated on reducing administrative barriers and market integration. But for now, growth, growth, growth, should be everything.
Yes, Africa’s integration agenda is important. But China’s surprising experience shows that development can happen even in the messiest, disintegrated environment, as long as there is a focus on growth, and cheap capital. In Africa, we too need these, as well as integration.
Huiyi Chen is China’s development institutions lead at Development Reimagined.
Mariamawit Ghenna is research and coordination consultant at Development Reimagined.
This piece is the latest in a series with Development Reimagined on “China through African eyes”. Too often the focus on China is either on what it has achieved or as a competitor. The series will explore the “how” of China, and how and when African countries can adapt this into African contexts.