When China began its reform and opening-up journey in 1970s, it was a very different country from the one the world knows today.
It was poor. Hundreds of millions of its people lived in extreme poverty. Its economy was largely closed to the outside world and its industrial base was nowhere near the global powerhouse it would eventually become. Four decades later, the transformation is difficult to ignore.
The World Bank estimates that China has lifted nearly 800 million people out of extreme poverty since 1978. Over the same period, its economy grew at an average rate of more than nine per cent a year, transforming the country from a low-income economy into an upper-middle-income one. By 2020, China had eradicated extreme poverty by its national definition.
Walk through Shenzhen today and it is difficult to imagine that this was once a relatively small fishing town. Look at Shanghai's skyline, China's high-speed railway network, its manufacturing capacity, its digital economy or its growing technological capabilities and another question naturally follows: how did China get here?
There are many answers. Reform. Industrialisation. Trade. Investment in infrastructure. Education. Technology. Urbanisation.
But there is another lesson that Kenya should pay particular attention to as it begins thinking beyond Vision 2030. That China has been remarkably deliberate about where it wants to go, and equally deliberate about breaking that journey into manageable steps.
Kenya is now beginning its own next chapter.
As Vision 2030 approaches its deadline, the country is looking towards Vision 2060 as the new long-term development framework meant to carry Kenya into the future. President William Ruto has called for a national conversation on a development plan that will succeed Vision 2030.
The ambition is welcome. But perhaps Kenya's most important question should not be what it wants to become in 2060. It should be how it intends to get there.
This is where China's experience becomes instructive.
China's development planning is not simply about producing a grand document and waiting for the future to arrive. Its long-term objectives are broken down into shorter planning cycles.
The country's 14th Five-Year Plan covered 2021 to 2025, while simultaneously setting long-range objectives through 2035. In other words, China can look decades ahead without losing sight of what must be achieved in the next five years.
There is something Kenya can borrow from this. Vision 2060 is a sufficiently distant horizon to inspire a generation. But 2060 is also so far away that accountability can easily disappear into the fog.
A Kenyan sitting in 2026 may not realistically hold today's government accountable for what happens in 2060. But we can ask what should have changed by 2030, 2035 or 2040.
That is why the vision must be accompanied by concrete milestones.And, perhaps most importantly, who should be responsible for delivering each of these things?
China's story also demonstrates the importance of continuity.
Development cannot be something that begins with every new administration and ends when that administration leaves office.
Kenya has had Vision 2030, the Big Four Agenda and the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda. Each came with its own priorities and vocabulary. But a country cannot build a prosperous future by repeatedly changing the destination.
A national development vision must outlive presidents.
There is an interesting passage in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, Volume V, which speaks to this idea of continuity which I'd like to draw your attention to.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee "has taken into account domestic and international dynamics, balanced development and security imperatives, promoted high-quality development, and taken further steps to advance and plan for deeper comprehensive reform. As a result, solid progress has been made in building China into a modern socialist country in all aspects,” reads the excerpt.
On China’s journey ahead, the book says, “we must ensure that in everything we do, we work for the people and rely on the people. All our tremendous achievements to date have been made by relying closely on the people, and we will continue to look to their support in the future to secure new achievements.
I’m drawing your attention to this because of how well it explains the idea that a country's development agenda must be bigger than the person occupying the highest office.
If Vision 2060 is genuinely a national vision, its success should not depend on whether the administrationthat launched it is still in office. A future administration should inherit it, improve it where necessary and, most importantly, continue implementing what works.
Continuity of purpose is, perhaps, one of the most important things Kenya can borrow from China's planning experience.
This does not mean copying China's entire system. Kenya’s institutions are different, and they should remain so.
The lesson is about planning discipline, institutional continuity and a willingness to pursue long-term goals, not political imitation.
China's rise also offers another important lesson that prosperity does not happen because a country writes down the word "prosperity". It requires an economic strategy.
China's reform and opening-up policy created space for markets, foreign investment, trade and private enterprise. The country invested heavily in infrastructure, manufacturing, education, science and technology. It progressively connected its economy to the rest of the world.
The result was not instantaneous but built over decades. And this may be the most important lesson for Kenya.
As a country, we have become accustomed to thinking in electoral cycles. China thought in generations. That difference matters.
A road takes years to build. A railway takes years. A university takes years to produce researchers. An industrial ecosystem takes decades. Human capital takes even longer.
Countries become prosperous when they are willing to begin projects whose full benefits may be enjoyed by people who are not yet born. Look at the Belt and Road Initiative and see how it has painstakingly taken a deliberate and brick and brick process to reach where it has.
That is what makes Vision 2060 potentially important. But it must not become another beautiful document sitting on a government shelf.
The new vision should therefore come with a national scorecard that Kenyans can inspect every year. Successive administrations should be judged against it.
China's journey from widespread poverty to an economic powerhouse was not achieved through one five-year plan, one leader or one spectacular project. It was the accumulation of reforms, investments, policies and planning decisions made over decades.
Kenya does not need to become China. But as Nairobi draws its own map to 2060, we would be wise to study how Beijing drew and repeatedly redrew its map to prosperity, and how it kept working on the vision long after the excitement of launching it had passed.
