The Belt and Road Initiative Shows China’s Open Mind Mentality in the New Era

By Professor Zhao Lei

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The Belt and Road Initiative Shows China’s Open Mind Mentality in the New Era

By Professor Zhao Lei

Institute of International Strategy, CPCCC Party School

The coordinate doctrine of the Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative is not for China to unilaterally plan the world, but to genuinely get integrated into the world. The Belt and Road construction involves a wide range of fields, and requires related actions both internally and externally. To promote the Belt and Road construction needs promoting overall co-ordination, insisting on land and sea co-ordination, adhering to internal and external co-ordination, and strengthening government and enterprises co-ordination.

Taking land and sea as a whole displays China's global outlook, overall concept and architecture vision. As far as China is concerned, this Initiative conforms to the inherent requirements of China's economic development and helps to promote the development of China's frontier minority regions. If the national interests can be divided into security interests and development interests, the land-sea overall co-ordination of the Belt and Road Initiative is to combine the security interests and development interests together, and turns tips of the reform and opening up into a forefront of the opening-up for the new period. Internationally, the Belt and Road Initiative will break the long-standing pattern of separation or even confrontation between land power and sea power, promote the formation of a new land-sea geo-space architecture composed of Eurasian continents fully connected with the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.

The overall internal and external co-ordination is the key-link. The Belt and Road construction establishes specific cooperation programs with policy interconnectivity, facilities interoperability, trade interconnectivity, financing interconnectivity, people-to-people interconnection as the main contents, clarifies the opening momentum of China’s localities, details the functions and responsibilities of the relevant provinces along the Belt and Road, can organically help overall coordination of both the international and domestic markets, both the domestic and international resources and both the domestic and international rules. This is far-reaching consideration of the new national leadership to further reform in China by expanding the opening up to the world, and through overall internal and external co-ordination to truly promote two-way interaction between China and the international community, not only to "get interconnected between the two", but also to "become deeply integrated between the two".

The overall co-ordination between government and enterprises is a point for breakthrough. An effective advance of the Belt and Road construction relies on both the government and the enterprises, both of which together constitute the double engine to build the Belt and Road, and needs synergy. To promote the Belt and Road construction should not only bring to play the government role in commanding the orientation and in overall coordination, but also bring to play the market role. The government should play a leading role in popularizing promotion, strengthening coordination, establishing mechanisms, etc. but should also pay attention to structuring regional economic cooperation mechanisms with market as the foundation and enterprises as the mainstay, extensively mobilize all types of enterprises to participate in and guide more social forces to involve in the Belt and Road construction, vigorously form an organically combined government, market, and society cooperation mode, thus formatting three-dimensional pattern of government leadership, enterprise participation and public promotion. Regarding the enterprise role in the Belt and Road construction, the state-owned enterprises are the main force while the private enterprises are the task force.

Multilevel connotation of the Belt and Road Initiative

The fundamental goal of the Belt and Road construction is to promote the economic factors to flow freely and orderly, efficient configuration of resources and deep integration of markets, encourage countries along the routes to carry out economic policy coordination, unfold regional cooperation in a wider scope, at higher level and more deeply, work together to build a community of shared interests, a community of shared future and a community of shared responsibility featuring political trust, economic integration, and cultural tolerance. The essence of the Belt and Road Initiative is interconnectivity and interoperability, its connotations have multi-levels:

Economically, the emphasis is on cooperation and win-win outcome. The economic connotation is a priority attribute of the Belt and Road Initiative. This Initiative is first of all to assure the Chinese people and the international community to enjoy the dividend and benefits of the Belt and Road Initiative. To take the Belt and Road construction as an opportunity to carry out cross-border interconnectivity and interoperability, improve trade and investment cooperation level, promote international capacity and equipment manufacturing cooperation, the essence of which is to stimulate new demand by increasing effective supply, and achieve the world economic rebalancing. Especially under the current circumstances of the global economic downturn, if the huge production capacity formed in cycles goes global and meets the urgent needs of countries along the routes for their national industrialization and modernization and improvement of infrastructure, it is conducive to stabilizing the current world economic situation.

In terms of humanistic affairs, the emphasis is placed on the cultural mutual-learning. The humanistic connotation is the core attribute of the Belt and Road Initiative. People-to-people interconnection is an important content of the Belt and Road construction, but is also the humanistic foundation for any international cooperation. Under the new historical conditions, that China puts forward the Belt and Road Initiative is to inherit and carry forward the Silk Road spirit, to combine China’s development with that of the developing countries along the routes, to combine the Chinese dream with dreams of peoples along the Belt and Road together, to give the ancient Silk Road a new connotation of the times, and to build a humanistic architecture conducive to China’s peaceful development, and conducive to the mutual appreciation, mutual understanding and mutual respect among countries along the Belt and Road.

In terms of global governance, public products attribute is emphasized. The content of public products is the value attribute of the Belt and Road Initiative, and reflects China’s global vision and a major-country emotion. Public products include at least three tiers: material public products, conceptual public products and institutional public products. For a long time, a great contribution is made by the Chinese material public products, helping other developing countries to build roads, bridges, and power supply, etc., and providing personnel, financial and material supply. The Belt and Road construction highlights China’s efforts in providing conceptual public products and institutional public products. The Belt and Road Initiative transcends the traditional concepts, represents the development trend for the international community to eliminate edges. Interoperability and interconnectivity has become a fashion, Chinese culture and philosophy such as that a pain is from bodily channels jam, and well-functioned bodily channels help eliminate pain begin to attract much attention. Regarding the institutional public products, the rules of the game advocated by the Belt and Road Initiative put more emphasis on fairness, openness and inclusiveness, and contain moralism superiority compared with western countries clubs and exclusive rules of the game.

Accordingly, basic connotations of the Belt and Road Initiative can be summarized as full interoperability and interconnectivity in economics, cultures, and global governance, on which basis, the Belt and Road construction is an important measure to boost the world economy, an important platform to deepen cultural exchanges, and also an innovative practice of China’s participation in global governance.

The wisdom docking by the Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative is proposed by China, but its success requires the building of international consensus, and reflecting of global wisdom. To build the Belt and Road needs all parties sincerity and determination, but also requires their far-sightedness; needs the strategy docking, plan docking and project docking, but also needs wisdom docking, action docking, and public opinion docking. To constantly consolidate a new framework for sustainable development needs to achieve the above docking in six aspects, especially wisdom docking.

Firstly, to realize wisdom docking needs to strengthen academic research, theoretical support and discourse system building for the Belt and Road construction. Give impetus to those world's leading think tanks to do cooperative research on forward issues, hot issues and difficult issues, realize the Belt and Road wisdom growth, and create a sound cultural conditions and political ecology. The Belt and Road construction is a process of continuous dynamic refining debugging, and is required gathering wisdom from all sides. Therefore, gradually establish and improve the dynamic evaluation system for the Belt and Road construction, and provide strong institutional guarantee for this grand Initiative.

Secondly, continuously strengthen soft projects landing of the Belt and Road Initiative, such as culture, standard, technology, professional services etc.. Currently, the Belt and Road most construction projects are heavy assets, such as roads, bridges, ports, tunnels, industrial parks, energy resources, infrastructure construction projects, etc., the characteristics of which is large investments, long cycles, and bigger risks. Therefore, some light asset projects to play an adhesive and lubricant role are specially needed, since these projects are closer to the livelihood of peoples in countries along the routes, and beneficial to people-to-people interconnection.

Thirdly, to promote the Belt and Road construction, talents are the key. Talents are not only mobile, but are also shared. The Belt and Road construction faces many challenges such as the constantly changing international environment, the complex regional situation, massive immediate needs, etc., related to some specific issues of geopolitics, culture, society, law, language, religion, etc.. To get these matters solved, various talents are needed, talents and their ideas are encouraged to enjoy sufficient flow along the Belt and Road. Only pooling the global talents, can the Belt and Road Initiative be more dynamic, and more attractive.