By Staff Reporters

President Xi Jinping raised the initiative of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road in the autumn of 2013, aiming to build a platform for openness and cooperation, providing new impetus for the cooperative development of participating countries.

China has been planning and working on the high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for the past 8 years, and concrete achievements have been made.

Actually, the BRI has enhanced the degree of openness domestically and allowed for the opening of more avenues for international cooperation. China signed more than 200 documents concerning BRI cooperation with 140 countries and 32 international organizations.

The total trade in goods between China and countries along the Belt and Road hit 10.4 trillion USD, and China's non-financial direct investment amounted to more than 130 billion USD.

The BRI also realized a win-win situation for participating countries. According to a World Bank report in 2019, trade is estimated to grow from between 2.8 and 9.7 percent for BRI corridor economies, and between 1.7 and 6.2 percent for the world. Increased trade is expected to increase global real income by 0.7 to 2.9 percent. The BRI could help lift 7.6 million people out of extreme poverty and 32 million people from moderate poverty.

In terms of making the globe a greener place, the BRI has exerted efforts through cooperative projects in participating countries. The hydro-floating solar hybrid project at Sirindhorn Dam in Thailand, which was constructed by China and Thailand, realizes power generation from floating photovoltaic and water resources simultaneously or alternately. This project manages to generate electricity free from the uncertainty of weather and reduce about 47,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.

Though the BRI was initiated by China, the benefits of the initiative belong to the whole world. Faced with the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 and climate change, the BRI also embraces opportunities. The high-quality development of the BRI will make more contributions to a shared future for mankind.