China Proposes ‘Belt and Road’
Written by Alfonso Elizondo
Amid the absurd trends towards restoration of the past in most Western nations, the Chinese Government, led by Xi Jinping, has proposed to the world today a new concept of peaceful global coexistence by means of mutual cooperation and in the search for connectivity in the areas of policy and infrastructure among the different nations of the world.
On May 14 and 15, the International Cooperation Forum on the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, first formulated in 2013, was held in Beijing. The Forum was attended by more than 1,500 delegates from 130 countries and 70 international organizations, including 29 Heads of State and Government. In September and October 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the joint construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road known as the Belt and Road.
It is an open, inclusive and mutually beneficial cooperation platform that seeks connectivity in policy, infrastructure and trade among the different countries of the world, based on the principle of intensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. In the last three years, more than 100 countries have been added to the Belt and Road, as well as international organizations included in UN General Assembly resolutions and in the Security Council.
Although this project started in China, its benefits are for the entire world. So far, China has signed cooperation agreements with some 40 nations and international organizations, and has implemented production capacity cooperation with more than 30 countries. So the volume of China’s foreign trade with all nations that have joined the initiative has exceeded $3 trillion, with a cumulative investment of more than 50 billion dollars.
Chinese corporations have established 56 areas of economic and trade cooperation in 20 countries, generating $1.1 billion in taxes and 180,000 jobs in those countries. During the Beijing Forum, 270 agreements were reached and the Joint Communiqué of Leaders Attending the Round Table was adopted, bringing together new accords for the creation of the Belt and Road.
This Chinese initiative is a proposal to promote global governance and an unremitting effort to build a common destiny for all of humanity. According to Xi Jinping, this project should be used to turn the Belt and Road into a path to peace, prosperity, openness and innovation that can connect all civilizations on the planet forever.
President Xi Jinping said that China will provide support for these new ideas of cooperation and mutual benefit with an additional 100 billion yuan for the Silk Road Fund and the organization of the International Import Expo starting in 2018. And to bolster free trade it has launched the Plan for Scientific Innovation and Technology in relation to innovative development. This is in addition to 60 billion yuan that will be earmarked for improving the welfare of the Chinese people.
This Belt and Road project has also attracted the attention of Latin America in the last three years, as the presidents of Chile and Argentina attended the Beijing Forum and decided to join the project. The Belt and Road is opening up a new era of interconnectivity, reciprocal learning, shared development and common prosperity, completely displacing the old Western idea of establishing communication with other countries through military, commercial, financial and technological dominance.
There is no doubt that China is now establishing the principles that will govern the new world order, although it is not possible to know how long it will take for it to prevail completely. Nor should one rule out the possibility that France may be able to develop a new model of the State within the old framework of federal representative democracy, and that Germany will try to be the nation with the best industrial production and financial control in Europe. But reality clearly shows that a new world order is already being created, one that is totally different from the world order of the last two hundred years, and that its spirit will be beyond our reach until we come to know the moral consciousness and respect for individual freedom that exist in the models of the State in the Far East, where mythologies are not anthropocentric, and representative democracy is not practiced the way it is in the Western world.
Addendum: For those still living under the dying myths of Western culture it will be very difficult to understand this process of transition now being experienced by the entire world because the processes of in-depth analysis have been eliminated from their brains or their permanent absorption in the search for material success has not left them enough time to properly use their brains’ neurons.
For those who are still children or in their teens, this process will go unnoticed because their neuronal synapses are adapted to a new reality where family values, their distant relationship with others close to their lives and the view of the political and social world will allow them to happily live the new virtual reality that has now begun.