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STUDIES IN THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PUBLIC POLICY
China’s Uneven
and Combined
Development
Steven Rolf
Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy
Series Editors
Toby Carroll
City University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Paul Cammack
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
Kelly Gerard
The University of Western Australia
Crawley, Australia
Darryl S. L. Jarvis
The Education University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy presents cutting edge, innovative research on the
origins and impacts of public policy. Going beyond mainstream public policy debates, the series
encourages heterodox and heterogeneous studies of sites of contestation, conflict and cooperation
that explore policy processes and their consequences at the local, national, regional or global levels.
Fundamentally pluralist in nature, the series is designed to provide high quality original research of
both a theoretical and empirical nature that supports a global network of scholars exploring the
implications of policy on society. The series welcomes manuscript submissions from scholars in the
global South and North that pioneer new understandings of public policy.
China’s Uneven
and Combined
Development
Steven Rolf
Digit Centre
University of Sussex
Brighton, UK
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my mother, Sharon.
Acknowledgements
This work grew out of my PhD thesis which I researched at the Univer-
sity of Bristol’s School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
(SPAIS) between 2012 and 2017. There, my supervisors Jeff Henderson
and Adam Dixon provided invaluable guidance and support. Jeff also
worked hard to secure me funding for language training and fieldwork
trips, and kindly provided countless meals and drinks.
My thanks to all those who helped out during my fieldwork in China,
and those who kept me company while working on the thesis and eventu-
ally the book. To Soraya and Robin for hosting me for a significant period
of the writing. And to my family: Jeff, Dai, Jo, Dave, Mike, Sophia, Joseph
and Jacob.
Most of all, my gratitude and love are extended to Rosa.
vii
Praise for China ’s Uneven and
Combined Development
“Through the lens of the Marxian theory of uneven and combined devel-
opment, Rolf meticulously weaves together a coherent account of China’s
rise from the initiation of market reform to the Belt and Road Initiative
and the trade war with the US. It sheds new lights on the many contradic-
tions within China and in the global geopolitical economy that the China
boom brings.”
—Ho-fung Hung, Henry M. & Elizabeth P. Wisenfeld Professor in
Political Economy, The John Hopkins University, USA
ix
Contents
xi
xii CONTENTS
Index 259
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 Chinese GDP (current US$, billions, lhs) and CGDP
growth rate (%, rhs), 1987–2010 (Source Author’s
calculations from World Bank indicators [n.d.]) 129
Fig. 5.2 Foreign direct investment as a percentage of gross fixed
capital formation, 1990–2010 (Source Author, based on
data from UNCTAD [2011]) 131
Fig. 5.3 Trade balance with major regional trading partners (billions
of US$) (Source Author’s calculations from World Bank
indicators [n.d.]) 140
Fig. 5.4 High-tech manufacturing value added (US$,
billions)—China in comparative perspective (Source Data
from National Science Board ([2012]) 154
Fig. 6.1 GDP components in China (%, lhs) and GDP growth rate
(%, rhs), 1999–2018 (Source World Bank indicators [n.d.]) 173
Fig. 6.2 Changes in unit labour costs, various countries (percent)
(Source The Conference Board [n.d.]) 192
Fig. 6.3 Processing exports versus ordinary exports (% of all
exports), 2017–2019 (Source General Administration of
Customs, PRC [n.d.]) 198
Fig. 7.1 State and private fixed asset investment in China (%
change, lhs; total stock in billions of 2011 US$, rhs)
(Source Author’s calculations from NBS [various years],
IMF [n.d.]) 210
Fig. 7.2 The state and private sectors, and the state-embedded
private sector (Source Author) 213
xv
xvi LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 7.3 Total debt and money supply (% of GDP, lhs) and total
forex/gold reserves (billions of US$, rhs) (Source World
Bank indicators [n.d.] and IMF [n.d.]) 214
Fig. 7.4 Fixed asset investment (FAI) in real estate and total FAI
(100 m yuan, lhs) and rate of change of real estate and
total FAI (%, rhs) (Source NBS [various dates]) 218
Fig. 7.5 Real house price index for China (2010 = 100) (Source
US Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis [n.d.]) 219
List of Tables
xvii
CHAPTER 1
1.1 Overview
Since 1978, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has pulled off a devel-
opmental miracle. China leapt from its position as one of the lowest
income economies in the world into the bracket of upper middle-income
countries—a truly rare feat for a large, poor state in the history of the
capitalist world economy. During this period, its achievements in poverty
reduction, industrialisation, urbanisation and improvements in agricul-
tural productivity and the bureaucratic capacity of the state were, taken
collectively, of a world historic scale. Explosive economic development,
moreover, has catapulted the PRC into the role of the world’s second
superpower; encouraging the view—now increasingly mainstream—that
China may be likely to play a hegemonic role in (an Asian-centric) world
politics during the twenty-first century, reprising that of the United States
in the latter part of the twentieth (though whether this is to be welcomed
or not remains an open question: cf. Jacques 2009; Mearsheimer 2006;
Rachman 2016). Nor have some major negative upshots of this trans-
formative project gone unnoticed: the high degree of labour exploitation
and the creation of a labouring migrant underclass, environmental degra-
dation, rampant corruption and increasing political authoritarianism.
Outgrowing its national or even regional impact, China’s growth miracle,
1 UCD is conceived here as only being operative under conditions of capitalism, rather
than a transhistorical phenomenon (Ashman 2009). Davidson (2010) suggests even stricter
criteria—UCD is only operative in states that are experiencing rapid development, but are
unable to reach the developmental level of the advanced capitalist economies. It seems
extremely premature to make a firm judgement on this question in China’s case, but
it seems self-evident that China is experiencing such a process, regardless of whether it
makes it to the other side of advanced capitalism or not.
4 S. ROLF
earlier by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan—in which the state pursues
an interventionist industrial policy based upon ‘getting prices wrong’,
state-led investment, and heavy market regulation to secure a nationally
based Listian competitive (rather than a Ricardian comparative) advantage
(Stiglitz 2014).2
While some convergence of perspectives is evident over historical
particularities (cf. Lin 2013; So 2013), both market-led and statist polit-
ical economies have held firm their core—and opposed—contentions
regarding the drivers of Chinese growth (Lee 2014). China, it is claimed,
grew either because of economic liberalisation, or because of its resistance
to significant liberalisation vis-à-vis other large economies in structurally
similar positions (India, Russia and Brazil). But even while delivering
conflicting judgements on the merits of marketisation versus dirigiste
statism, underpinning both sides of this debate is a faithfulness to method-
ologically nationalist conceptions of economic development: in which the
state is conflated with the national economic territory, and understood as
somehow apart from its context in the world economy and states system
(Agnew 1994). This double movement proves particularly obscuring in
the Chinese case—not least because China’s boom has dovetailed with
its unprecedented integration into the global political economy. It conse-
quently seems remarkable that both dominant approaches should chiefly
explore factors internal to China to explain its period of export led
industrialisation (Moore 2002).3
2 I take the term ‘statist political economy’ from the work of Ben Selwyn (2014). It aims
to capture the broad set of approaches which crystallised in opposition to the Washington
consensus on global development, celebrating the Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese
developmental states; this through an intellectual lineage originating with the work of
Friedrich List and Alexander Gerschenkron, among others (Chang 2002; Amsden 2001;
Wade 1990; Johnson 1982).
3 Two prominent exceptions stand out here. The first is Arrighi’s (2007) Adam Smith
in Beijing, which (ambitiously) attempts to characterise China’s rise as a response to the
decline of US imperialism. Despite its promising title, however, the work only considers
in a curtailed form those contemporary developments internal to China—and its analysis
here is fatally hampered, I suggest, by Arrighi’s reluctance to understand development
in China as capitalist (preferring the epithet non-capitalist market economy). This allows
for creative theorization, but delimits the possibility for understanding China as part of
the capitalist global political economy. The second, Hung (cf. 2009, 2015) is in my view
the most incisive political economist working on contemporary China. His conclusions
regarding the incorporation of China into the US-dominated global political economy
suggest, however, that he cleaves somewhat too strongly to the ‘state internationalisation’
theses of Panitch and Gindin (2012) and Poulantzas (2014). I prefer to show how
10 S. ROLF
capitalist production has a territoriality of its own which tends to produce geopolitical
conflagration.
1 INTRODUCTION: CHINA SHAKES THE WORLD SYSTEM 11
4 This most recent formulation runs against the grain of some of Cammack’s (2012)
previous work, however, which does recognise the significance of exploring emerging
‘varieties of capitalism’ and explores the significance of heavy state regulation in Asia.
1 INTRODUCTION: CHINA SHAKES THE WORLD SYSTEM 13
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1 INTRODUCTION: CHINA SHAKES THE WORLD SYSTEM 19
2.1 Introduction
The global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath have put states back
at the centre of attention. State-led economic stimulus; the rise of increas-
ingly interventionist forms of capitalism in the form of the BRICS; and
the return of significant geopolitical tensions and conflagrations from the
Caucasus, Ukraine, Syria and the broader MENA region, to the South
and East China Seas; have decisively challenged the notion that states and
geopolitics have been undermined by the pressures of global economic
integration (Callinicos 2010; Klassen 2014; Nowak and Ekrem 2018).
The levelling of global geoeconomic space conjectured by both neolib-
erals (cf. Wolf 2005; Bhagwati 2004) and some Marxists (cf. Hardt and
Negri 2000; Robinson 2005) alike, has not materialised. The ‘globalisa-
tion’ of the 1990s and early 2000s instead revealed itself as a new phase in
the world expansion and deepening of geographically differentiated and
antagonistic capitalist social relations (Barrow 2005; Rosenberg 2005).
As globalist ontologies have come under challenge, critical voices have
again proposed (and celebrated already existing) state developmentalist
alternatives to globalisation as more equitable and sustainable models of
growth, especially for late developers (cf. Evans 2014). The implication
is that the ‘ideology’ of neoliberalism, the ‘vested interests’ of (usually
financial) capitalists, or a ‘lack of institutional capacity’ are to blame for
the cases where these policies are not enacted and development stalls as a
result (Selwyn 2014). While this shift plainly represents an improvement
on the Washington consensus prescriptions of the first stage of rollout
neoliberalism, such statist perspectives are plainly vulnerable to the charge
of ‘methodological nationalism’: that is, they present capitalism not ‘as
an international relation of exploitation [and competition] but as a rela-
tion between different sets of owners of sources of revenue within the
state’ (Pradella 2014, 190). As such, such research fails to conceptu-
alise capitalist development as a (tendentially) globalising system where
all developmental processes are shaped by (i) a world economy with a
dynamic which tends to overdetermine local forms of economic growth
and (ii) a states system where geopolitics severely impacts upon state poli-
cies. It is not surprising then that such research has tended systematically
to overstate the case regarding the possibility of pursuing such prefer-
ential policy mixes—and offers little to no clues as to the (quite unique)
structural contexts in which such developmental strategies are possible for
states of the global south.
This dichotomy of neoliberal-globalist and methodologically nation-
alist theoretical perspectives on the political economy of development has
plainly become strained in the post-2008 world, in which, while produc-
tion has continued (though at a slower rate than previously) to become
ever more internationalised through complex cross-border production
networks (Henderson et al. 2002), the policy agency of states has
remained as substantial as ever. The trial confronting political economists,
then, is to deliver theoretical approaches that refuse to explore political
economies in their isolation but as part of a world economy and, crucially,
which can explain why and with what consequences the system of nation
states is reproduced as an essential element of a world economy increas-
ingly characterised by the ‘geographical spread and functional integration
of production activities’ (Dicken 2014).
This introductory chapter proposes Trotsky’s notion of UCD as one
theoretical orientation capable of living up to this challenge, but also
highlights some critical deficiencies associated with recent scholarship
in this area. An extensive debate on the value of UCD for developing
an integrated analysis of states and capital has developed over the last
decade (for a critical overview, see Rioux [2015, 482–486]). While I
believe a UCD perspective can assist in developing an understanding
of the materiality of the capitalist states system as a ‘dimension of the
capitalist mode of production’ (Callinicos 2009, 83; Pozo-Martin 2007;
2 UNEVEN AND COMBINED DEVELOPMENT … 23
Desai 2012; Davidson 2012), and this literature has significantly advanced
our historical understanding of global process by which the feudal states
system was transformed into a capitalist one (cf. Anievas and Nişancıoğlu
2015), it is yet to satisfactorily account for why, and with what conse-
quences, the plurality of states remains ‘a constitutive expression and
component of capitalist relations of exploitation and competition’ (Hirsch
and Kannankulam 2011, 22) in an era when the transition to capitalism
is complete. In attempting to account for why capitalist value relations
continue to be expressed through a system of multiple nation states and
with what implications for our understanding of the world system this can
present, the purpose is to develop UCD as a framework capable of under-
standing the dramatic and mutually interactive transformation of China
and the global political economy since the 1970s as a singular process.
(1) The ‘whip of external necessity’ obliges all states to take develop-
mental initiatives, due to economic and military threats from more
developed states (Trotsky 2009, 4). In Trotsky’s time, most states
which could not meet these obligations were subjected to formal
colonisation, but today are considerably more likely to experience
informal subjugation and poverty.
(2) However, the ‘privilege of historical backwardness’ grants those
late developing states which can successfully take developmental
initiatives the possibility of temporally compressing their economic
growth processes: leapfrogging the stages of development passed
28 S. ROLF
Effects (1) and (2) are both forms of combined development which
operate between states and have been widely observed by the literature
on catch-up development (discussed further in Chapter 3). Effect (3),
however, operates inside states. To this extent, it can be understood as
representing a geopolitical theory of the social—a means of integrating
the causal effects of geopolitical competition between states with the
trajectory of social development within a state. This opens the door to
a multiscalar theory of development which can illuminate several concep-
tual and empirical difficulties confronting those studying development in
the global south which too often remains trapped at either the national
or international scale of analysis.
Three axioms emerge from these propositions that can help orient our
study of geopolitical economy: First is that the capitalist world economy
constitutes a totality, not the space where essentially autonomous states
sometimes interact; and so its transformations are cumulative and not iter-
ative (see also McMichael 2001; Harris 1986). Second is that the states
system shapes and upholds uneven development, which is not a purely
‘economic’ process—since advanced states (except in unusual conditions,
as explored in Chapter 4) are likely to attempt to maintain their own
advantage and block rival developers, while the agency of peripheral states
pursuing strategies of catch-up development fuels combined development
2 UNEVEN AND COMBINED DEVELOPMENT … 29
1 This competition does not of necessity take military form. In fact, it is far more likely
to take the form of tariffs, protectionism and the formation of regional trading blocs—
which are best understood as part of a continuum of international relations (Davidson
2012).
30 S. ROLF
These world market disharmonies are merely the ultimate adequate expres-
sions of the disharmonies which have become fixed as abstract relations
within the economic categories […] which have a local existence of the
smallest scale.
In de ééne hand den strooppot, in de andere den strop, zoo deed hij
zijn intocht.
„Gij Boeren,” zeide Cloete, „wees toch niet verblind! Ge zult veilig en
zeker wonen onder de vleugelen van het machtigste rijk der aarde.
Ik ben ook een onderdaan onzer geëerbiedigde Majesteit, en bezit ik
niet een onbeperkte persoonlijke vrijheid? Gij wilt de vrijheid—waar
gedijt ze beter dan onder den scepter onzer jonge koningin? Gij
behoeft niet eens den eed der getrouwheid af te leggen: een gewone
verklaring, dat ge Britsche onderdanen zijt, werpt u al de zegeningen
der beschaving in den schoot. Ge behoudt uw eigen land, uw eigen
bestuur, uw eigen taal, en het machtige Engeland zal u met zijn
zwaard beschermen tegen de aanvallen der Kaffers.”
„Wilt gij niet beschermd worden, gij ongelukkigen? Dan schiet er niet
anders over dan je dood te schieten of uit het land te bannen.”
Dat was de strop.
„Maar wij zijn niet gebonden door dat besluit,” zeide [206]Barend
Jansen; „kom, de Jong, al wat waarlijk Afrikaander is, zal met ons
mede strijden tegen Engelsch verraad.”
„Omdat de Heere reeds een Pella voor ons heeft gereed gemaakt,
een toevluchtsoord der vrijheid—daar trekken wij heen.”
„Goed,” zeide Barend Jansen, „maar dan gauw, want ik kan die
Engelsche uniformen niet uitstaan.”
Op de hoogte gekomen, wendde hij zijn blik naar het zuiden, en daar
lag—in den glans der naar het westen neigende zon—het land Natal
in al zijne liefelijkheid voor hem.
Hij zag het glinsteren der beekjes, snel afvlietend van de heuvelen,
de als groene tapijten zich uitstrekkende dalen, de schaduwrijke
bosschen!
Hoe gaarne had hij daar de pinne zijner tente diep ingeslagen—
helaas het mocht niet zijn!
Langzaam gleed zijn oog over het panorama heen, totdat het bleef
hangen aan een eenzamen wilgenboom. [208]
Onder dien boom lag Mieke begraven, de dochter van zijn trouwsten
vriend. En ach! Daar verder heen strekten zich die kleine
klipheuvelen uit—onder die klippen lagen zoo vele lieve, hartelijk
beweende vrienden begraven! Daar lagen ze: de vaders naast
hunne zonen; de kinderen in de armen hunner moeders—vermoord
door de scherpe assegaai.…
Zijn blik werd al droeviger; op zijn edel gelaat legde zich de smart als
een sombere avondwolk.
Wat al leed, wat al ellende had het volk der Emigranten-Boeren niet
doorgemaakt! Door welke plassen van bloed en tranen waren die
ossenwagens heengegaan!
Aan den rand van den afgrond had de Heere het gered als een
teeken Zijner onwankelbare trouw.
En wat klaagde de Jong? Had God het volk der vrije Emigranten-
Boeren òoit verlaten, al hadden zij ’t van wege hunne zonden
verdiend? Was Hij niet steeds—in al hun trekken—voor hen als een
wolkkolom en vuurkolom geweest? Was niet steeds in den hoogsten
nood ook de onmiddellijke redding gevolgd? En had de Heere in Zijn
trouw verbond niet gezorgd, dat zij aan het Engelsche juk konden
ontkomen als een vogel aan den strik van den vogelvanger?
Op een harden klipsteen, daar zette de Jong zich neder. En hier in
de eenzaamheid, tusschen de rotsen en de spelonken en de kloven,
prees hij de onwankelbare trouw zijns Gods! [209]
Twee van die Boeren herkende Kloppers op den eersten blik; het
waren Barend Jansen en ouderling de Jong.
„En kom je zoo uit Natal? En hoe staat het met den oorlog? Wij
weten hier van niets, dan dat Dirk is gevallen.”
Ja, nu was Gert Kloppers tevreden. Neen, hij was meer dan
tevreden.
„Dirk leeft! Hij is op de komst!” het barstte hem als een juichkreet uit
de borst.
Als uit den ruischenden afgrond des doods ontving hij zijn zoon weer
terug—het geluk was te groot, om het in éénen keer te vatten!
„Dat had ik u daar net al kunnen zeggen, als gij mij [210]niet in de
rede waart gevallen,” zeide Jansen. „Op zekeren nacht wilde de
Engelsche generaal de onzen overrompelen, maar Pretorius had er
de lucht van gekregen, en heeft dien lord behoorlijk ontvangen. Dirk
was een der eersten bij de Engelsche kanonnen, en kreeg van een
Engelschen officier een zwaren sabelhouw over het voorhoofd.
Zwaar gewond werd hij opgenomen; daar is het praatje vandaan
gekomen, dat hij gesneuveld was. Hij werd bij een Engelschen
kolonist gebracht, die, ik moet de waarheid zeggen, hem liefderijk
heeft verpleegd, totdat hij was hersteld.”
En hij wreef zich, terwijl hij dit vertelde, heel genoegelijk de groote,
zware handen.
Nu gingen de Boeren met Kloppers voorop naar diens woning, en
werd moeder Kloppers van de vreugdetijding in kennis gesteld.
Daar stortte zij haar ziel uit in een vurig dankgebed tot Hem, Die
steeds is geweest en steeds zal blijven een Hoorder, ja een
Verhoorder des gebeds!
Floor spreekt nu als zijn meening uit, dat deze dag een eenigszins
feestelijk aanzien behoort te hebben, en dat al de kennissen in de
buurt dezen namiddag de gasten van zijn schoonzuster moeten zijn.
Anna’s woning biedt natuurlijk geen ruimte voor zooveel menschen,
doch daar weet Floor wel raad op. Hij timmert van een partij ruwe
planken eenige tafels en banken in elkaar, die hij dicht bij de woning,
in de schaduw van het geboomte, plaatst.
Doch Anna spreekt weinig; zij is stil en in zich zelve gekeerd. Het
naderende geluk maakt haar stil.
Grootvader Jansen heeft de kleine Mieke op zijn knie. Zij plukt met
haar blanke, mollige handjes in zijn ruigen baard en kraait van
plezier.
„Hoera,” roepen de jongeren, maar Anna kon het aan tafel niet meer
houden. [212]
Hij springt van het paard, en lachend, weenend, juichend valt Anna
in zijn armen.
Zij hoort slechts zijne stem, en het ruischt in hare ooren als het
ruischen van den morgenwind door de toppen van het geboomte:
„Anna, Liefste!”
Doch snel keert Anna tot de werkelijkheid terug, en vlug als een
hinde gaat zij tot haar vader.
„En wat een breed litteeken loopt daar over uw voorhoofd, Dirk!” zegt
Anna, en zij gaat met haar hand liefkozend over dat litteeken heen.
„Maar ik ben trotsch op dat litteeken,” gaat zij voort met schitterende
oogen, terwijl de dochter der vrije Emigranten-Boeren in haar boven
komt, „want gij zijt voortaan voor vriend en vijand geteekend als een
held van ons volk! Als een strijder voor vrijheid en recht!”
En nu heeft de ontmoeting plaats van Dirk met zijn ouders. Wat een
blijdschap, wat een vreugde! De ouders hebben hun zoon dood
gewaand, en zie—hij wandelt weer op de lichte hoogten des levens!
En nu lezer, laat den blik eens gaan over deze levende, sprekende
groep menschen, daar aan de lange, ruwe tafels!
Vrouw Kloppers heeft zoo even gezegd: „Hier zult ge zitten, Teunis,
naast mij. Gij hebt geen tehuis, maar ons tehuis zal voortaan ook het
uwe zijn, en gij zult ons zijn als een zoon des huizes.” En deze uit de
diepte opwellende hartelijkheid en liefde heeft den leeuwenjager
goed gedaan; dat kunt ge hem aanzien.
En naast den leeuwenjager ziet ge de breede schouders van Barend
Jansen. Op den stevigen nek staat het groote hoofd, en onder die
forsche, zware wenkbrauwen flikkeren de scherpe, vorschende
oogen. Vastberadenheid en onverzettelijkheid liggen in elke plooi
van dit gelaat, en dat stalen voorhoofd schijnt geschapen, om er een
muur mee in te loopen.
Maar thans ligt op dat gezicht een vroolijke tint, alsof de zon
tusschen de donderbuien zal doorkomen.
En die dáár is Floor. Ja, zijn vader heeft wel gelijk gehad, toen hij
zeide: „Met Floor zal het wel terecht komen.” Kijk maar in die flinke,
schrandere oogen—dan weet ge genoeg.
„Waarde, lieve Vrienden,” zoo begint hij met zijn klankvolle stem,
„het is heden voor ons allen een blijde, vroolijke dag, nu wij de
onzen, die in den oorlog zijn geweest, gezond en behouden weer
mogen ontmoeten. Ik denk hier bovenal aan mijn trouwen vriend
Gert Kloppers, die dezen dag tot een der gelukkigste zijns levens zal
rekenen.
„Doch deze dag heeft nog eene andere, eveneens blijde beteekenis.
„Wij vertegenwoordigen hier een klein deel, maar ’t is toch een deel
van het wakkere, vrijheidlievende volk der Emigranten-Boeren.”
De Boeren knikken bevestigend.
„Wij hebben ons teruggetrokken uit Natal, zeg ik, omdat ons volk
was uitgeput door de Kafferoorlogen, omdat de armoede ons
aangrijnsde, omdat de Engelsche regeering steeds nieuwe
hulptroepen zond, en omdat er kaf was onder het koren: verbasterde
Afrikaanders, die heil verwachtten van de Engelsche vlag.”
„Liever in de woestijn dan onder die vlag,” roept een forsche stem.
„Hier, broeders, op dezen grond zijn wij vrij! Het Engelsche juk is ons
van de schouders genomen, en wij ademen de vrijheidslucht! Het
doel van den zesjarigen zwerftocht is bereikt—God heeft onze
gebeden verhoord!”
„Dan zullen wij vechten,” zegt de Jong, „of we trekken hooger het
noorden in, want onze God heeft meer dan éénen zegen.”
„Tot den laatsten man!” zegt de Jong met verheffing van stem.
„Tot den laatsten man!” roepen de Boeren.
„Maar wij keeren tot het heden terug,” begint de Jong opnieuw, „en
thans zijn wij een vrij volk. Doch een vrij volk behoort een vlag te
hebben als een teeken zijner zelfstandigheid.”
„Kent gij deze vlag?” zegt hij, terwijl hij een vlag, aan een stok
gebonden, omhoog houdt.
Daar staat een Boer op; zijn haar is wit als sneeuw van ouderdom.
„En deze vierkleur,” roept hij met langzame, luide, plechtige stem:
„deze vierkleur moge wapperen over het vrije volk der Emigranten-
Boeren—van het Drakengebergte tot aan de Limpopo-rivier—
zoolang de zon boven Afrika schijnt!”
Het lied klimt op; het zet zich uit; het klinkt over velden en beemden!