Carrying on the ancient Silk Road spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit, five years ago, China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The initiative intends to blaze a new path for development and cooperation among countries along the routes, fueling their industrialization and urbanization, and thus contributing to the common prosperity of the world.
Over the past five years, a slew of cooperation projects under the BRI framework have started. With the construction of highways, railways, and ports in countries along the routes, new jobs are created for the locals. Through BRI projects, China is sharing its “development dividend” with these countries and introducing its successful development practices to them. By building industrial parks and establishing trade promotion platforms, China encourages those of its enterprises with a competitive edge to invest in countries along the Belt and Road, promote new business models such as cross-border e-commerce, and try to balance its trade with these countries, thus achieving mutual benefit. As of now, China has established 82 economic and trade cooperation areas in countries along the routes; meanwhile, injected a total investment of US $28.9 billion, and created 244,000 jobs for local residents.
Exchanges in the fields of education, science and technology, culture, sports, tourism, health care, and archaeology with these countries have also been promoted. At a symposium in Beijing marking the fifth anniversary of the BRI, Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out that jointly building the Belt and Road meets the global demand for reforming the global governance system and serves as a new plan for reform, fully manifesting the concept of a community with a shared future. Xi emphasized the importance of dialogue and consultation, joint contribution, shared benefits, win-win cooperation, exchange, and mutual learning. He called for efforts to promote political mutual trust, economic integration, and people-to-people exchanges among Belt and Road countries so as to advance the initiative step by step, producing achievements to benefit people along the routes.
As of May, China signed 16 free trade agreements with 24 countries and regions, almost half of them sitting along the Belt and Road.
With the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Silk Road Fund, and the Sino-CEEF Holding Company Limited, the BRI has become even more popular across the world. Over the past two years, the AIIB membership has expanded to 87 from 57 with a total of US $5.3 billion invested into the approved projects.
Recently, a survey of central banks in 30 countries and regions showed that 63 percent of these banks took the construction of the Belt and Road as a very rare opportunity, and 92 percent of them predicted that in the coming five years, BRI projects would boost economic growth in the countries involved.
At the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which was convened in early September, China and African countries committed to aligning the BRI with the African Union’s 2063 Agenda, the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and African countries’ national development strategies, trying to provide more opportunities and cooperation platforms for African countries, thus boosting their development.
UN Under-Secretary-General and Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme Tegegnework Gettu accredited the increasing popularity of the BRI to its inclusiveness, openness, and respect for diversity.
