Dr. Ahmed Nazif asked me what I meant when in my article of Friday I compared our growth rate that was achieved in 2007 to the rates achieved in India and China. We were at the opening ceremony of the third terminal of Cairo Airport, and it was so loud that you could not speak with the person sitting next to you, let alone explain the subject to the prime minister. It was not the first time that the man discusses with me some article of mine. It happened many times before either in his office or elsewhere. I always felt that he was keen to know about what is written here or there as much as he was keen to bring his ideas across to the people. But this time I felt that he did not get the right picture of what I wrote. So if what I said was vague to the Prime Minister, how would it be to the layman?
I explained it to him in a nutshell as much as the time and the loud atmosphere allowed. When Dr. Nazif left, I remembered again what I wrote about the Chinese President when he said a few days ago that the reform that his country started 30 years ago will continue because it is an ongoing process that must be parallel to a real open door policy, an important term that I will refer to later. And as all Egyptians like to do, I began to compare what the Chinese President said to the situation here. And we Egyptians get sad when the comparisons we make are not in our favor, as is mostly the case, especially when we find that it is not because we lack the resources they have abroad, but rather because we lack an imaginative vision. If China is celebrating 30 years of open door policies, we in Egypt started our open door policy 34 years since 1974 and right after the October War. But there is great difference between the outcome of their policy and that of ours. The Chinese knew from the very beginning that a 12% growth rate is not the ultimate goal, though it was the highest rate achieved in the world, merely because it did not eliminate poverty. They realized that there was another secret to it, namely education, which is the only factor that could distribute the benefits of growth equally among the people, whereby each citizen would have a share of the national income. Only good education makes each young man a partner in the future of his country, offers opportunities for everyone according to their qualifications and attains social justice in its true sense. So where do we stand as regards this matter? This is a question that I will tackle again later, for I did not know that a quick conversation with the Prime Minister would trigger all these meanings in me, and that the Chinese President's speech would touch a nerve in each of us.
