How Should China Develop Domestic Tourism in the Belt and Road Initiative?

Okay, Professor Wu now come to my second question. Yes, you are welcome. As we know, China has brought out the Belt and Road Initiative for several years. It involves many countries, regions and cities along this road. So in this contact of internationalization, how should we develop our domestic tourism? Yes. I think it’s a very good question, not only for me, but also for our audience. You know the Belt and Road Initiative was put forward by President Xi Jinping several years ago. and we get many welcome from the country and from other country, especially inland countries along the Silk Road and also the Maritime Silk Road countries.

I think the first we should mention is that the Silk Road is not a line or a road. It is a belt or a region. Because it covers many countries along the classic Silk Road from the ancient capital city of China that is today’s Xi’an city or in ancient time was called Chang’an city. And it extends westward through the Xinjiang Basin and also to many central ancient countries, goes to the last termination maybe Rome, the ancient capital of Roman Empire. At the same time, we have many sailors or many boats sail from China, from many ports like Ningbo or Liujiagang or Liuhe port close to Suzhou. And also we have ports from Guangzhou, from Quanzhou, something like that.

Many people, many experts think Quanzhou port is a major beginning port of China. We called it Maritime Silk Road in the sea, but it not only transported for silk, also more porcelain or tea. So many people consider the Maritime Silk Road is more like the tea road or the china road which means the porcelain that made of china is not only in China, but it’s a material. So I think both the Maritime Silk Road and the Land Silk Road are very important communication systems, not only for foods, for the materials but also for cultural things. We have different culture exchanged through the way among different countries, not only the tangible but intangible things.

The food we eat in China today, Like potato, melon, and many things that were not very popular in ancient China. So we imported all those food, maybe from Latin America and some from central Asia. At the same time, Chinese culture, technology or something like that was exported to other countries along the road. So I think it is very important, especially before the fifteenth century when Columbus sailed from Spain to the new continent, the today’s America or of central America. So I think when we release the initiative, the Belt and Road Initiative, it means that we reuse those cultural tradition or develop those resources for all the countries along this road in sea or on land.

We should remember that international tourism depends on cooperative work between the originated country and destination country together. We cannot you know build tourism system only within one country, we will depend on each other. So I think that tourism develops not only in China, but also in other countries along the Silk Road. Many countries want to send their guests or visitors to other countries, but also we host many international visitors from other countries along the road. So I think the first, the opportunity is for all the countries involved along the road. Second, you know we have different development phase of urbanization or modernization along the road.

Those countries along the sea or the coastal zones have more opportunities to develop, as they have some wealthy or rich part. But some inland countries or regions maybe have a late opportunity, but they have the good chance to learn more experience and welcome more investment from those developed countries and developed regions. So we have more opportunities to welcome the investment from those developed regions and countries for those less developed countries and regions along the road. So I think the initiative of the Belt and Road Initiative is an opportunity not only for China, but for all the rest of the countries along the road. Thank you.