Road to peace

The ancient Silk Road was built on camelback, on trade and cultural exchanges, and on peace. China has never sought to exploit its position as one of the important countries along the ancient Silk Road to engage in territorial expansion or seek hegemony.

According to John Wong (Professor and former director of East Asian Institute under the National University of Singapore): The ancient Silk Road is most impressive, not only because it endured for a long time in the absence of international mechanisms and an organizational framework, but also because it enabled and expanded cross-border business activities and cross-ethnic cultural exchanges through peaceful means.

China has never sought to exploit its position as one of the important countries along the ancient Silk Road to engage in territorial expansion or seek hegemony - in stark contrast to those western powers who used trade to establish their colonial rule.

Road to cooperation

According to Ruan Zongze (Vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies): Since the initiative of building a Silk Road economic belt was put forward, it has sparked a hot debate in both domestic and foreign media outlets. There are three main reasons:

First, the idea is closely related to China's own development.

Second, to promote the spirit of Silk Road and strengthen regional cooperation and cultural exchanges. Asia's economic growth is the engine of the world economy and the backbone of the globalization process. Regional cooperation in Asia is currently lagging when compared with neighboring regions. Interconnection and interlinking are two concepts, one involves the development of hardware, and the other - the software, including policies, customs, culture and communication - is also crucial.

Third, the strategic vision of the Silk Road economic belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is a road to peace. This requires us to inject new meaning when carrying forward the spirit of the ancient Silk Road.

Road to win-win

The Silk Road initiative embodies a spirit of peaceful cooperation, mutual learning and benefit, and win-win spirit, rather than a geographic entity. We will adhere to open, inclusive and voluntary principles.

According to Yang Jiemian (director of the academic committee of Shanghai Institute for International Studies): The Silk Road is not only conducive to the establishment of a commonality of interests between China and the other parties involved, but also helpful to regional peace, stability, and security. With the idea of a common destiny that transcends geo-strategic and geopolitical cooperation, it needs to achieve common development within the scope of Eurasia and Africa; it needs to abandon the "Eurasian geopolitical center of gravity theory", "zero-sum theory" and the Cold War mentality; it needs an overall thinking and design based on multilateral cooperation in a greater regional arena.

The article is edited and translated from 赋予古丝绸之路新时代内涵, source: People's Daily