Intent of the Belt and Road Initiative

To begin with, let’s look back to the history of the ancient Silk Road. From 2000 years ago, the ancient Silk Road was not a single road, it’s a network of multiple routes connecting Asia and Europe. The ancient Silk Road not only contribute to the trade but also enhance the culture exchange between China,India,Persia,Rome and Greece.

And now, China hopes to revive the ancient Silk Road and is undertaking the world’s largest infrastructure program called the Belt and Road Initiative, a land belt and a sea road. It will focuses on five routes and six economic corridors.

Why do we want to have this initiative? The intent of this initiative is to support China’s Go Global policy as well as facility trade between China and the Belt and Road countries. It also promotes industrial reconstructing of China’s industry. Further,it will strengthen China’s geopolitical roles and RMB’s global role. And not the least,it will reduce industrial oversupply for China. And the vision of the Belt and Road Initiative is to promote joint collaboration, so it is not a solo for China, it will be a symphony for all the parties involved in this initiative.

So who will be the investors for this initiative? Of course China has pledged over 1 trillion dollars for this initiative, but it is not enough. China will not fully fund the Belt and Road Initiative, by 2030 we expect that over half of B&R-related projects will be funded by private capital multilateral banks and foreign governments. The Belt and Road Initiative was first announced in 2013, so it has been 4 years since the announcement, and there has been a lot of progresses thus far. First of all, at the government level the consensus has been reached regarding

mutual collaboration on the Belt and Road Initiative. There are over 72 countries agreed to join the program. And on the operational level, many of the construction programs for railways,pipe lines has been initiated or implemented. And for the financial support, there are several frameworks of financial mechanism have been developed, for example the Asian Infrastructure Invest Bank has been in operation.

So the scope and scale of this initiative is staggering, there are 4.4 billions people will be affected by this initiative, which is the 62% of the whole world’s population, and this make up to 1/3 of the world’s GDP.