Foreign journalists leaf through materials at the media center of the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, April 23, 2019. (Photo/Han Xiaoming, People’s Daily)

 In a report titled “The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): Progress, Contributions and Prospects”, China reviewed and summarized its experiences of the Belt and Road construction in the past five some years.

The report, issued ahead of the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF), is an explicit explanation on how the BRI is changing the world.

The pursuit for development is an eternal theme of human society.

For individuals, development is to realize greater personal value in social and economic activities; for enterprises, development is to achieve more wealth through constant optimization of essential productive factors; for countries, development is to create better life for the people by making the most of its resources.

Faced with the conflicts and issues generated in the last round of economic globalization, the China-proposed BRI, crossing different regions, development phases, history, cultures, religions, and customs, is producing vitality with practices and making multiple achievements for the world.

The BRI is advancing global economic progress.

Building a high-rise begins with mounds of soil, and a journey of one thousand miles begins with the first step. For most people, what really matters is the present, and what they care about the most is their livelihood.

In this sense, if an initiative or concept can improve people’s life quality, create business and make them wealthy, it is bound to gain wide support.

The BRI is just benefiting the world exactly that way, making a great number of economic miracles for related countries.

The Western Europe-Western China highway connecting China, Kazakhstan, and Russia is basically complete. The 1,320MW Coal-Fired Power Plants at Port Qasim of Pakistan have been launched.

From 2013 to 2018, China's direct investment in Belt and Road countries surpassed $90 billion, while the value of trade between China and these countries exceeded $6 trillion.

The BRI is uniting people around the world to achieve common development.

As one Chinese poem describes, “despite the difficulties posed by mountains and rivers, there is a way to the next village shaded in soft willows and bright flowers.”

When the world is amid a global economic downturn, the cake of the global economy could hardly grow bigger. On the contrary, it has even become smaller, leading to sharper conflicts between growth and distribution, capital and labor, and efficiency and equity.

Under such circumstances, to deliberately cut off the flow of capital, technologies, products, industries, and talents between economies with a zero-sum game mindset will only drive the world economy into a dead end.

Against the setbacks encountered by economic globalization, China proposed the BRI and made it a broadly welcomed public product by practice.

Today, a series of top-level conferences, dialogue mechanisms and international organizations, including the BRF, the China-Arab States Expo, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the International Coalition for Green Development on the Belt and Road are uniting global people to make more contribution to world economic governance.

The BRI is making cooperation closer.

Harmony arises from the ability to appreciate different cultures for their unique beauty. With the development of productivity and scientific and technological progress, people across world are more closely connected to each other than ever before, and the world is becoming a global village.

The joint efforts to build the Belt and Road reflect the international community’s demand for a global governance system that is fair, egalitarian, open and inclusive,as well as humanity’s common aspiration for a bright future. The BRI is not only an important public product, but also an important platform for the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

“The Belt and Road will become a road of peace, prosperity, opening up, green development, innovation, connected civilizations, and clean government.” Such a statement made by the report will no doubt bring more benefits to the residents in the global village.

The world is going through major development, transformation and adjustment, and is faced with various problems and challenges. Nevertheless, peace, development, and cooperation remain the theme of the times.

The second BRF will definitely yield more fruits for the BRI construction, thus bringing the benefits to the people with stronger dedication, more concrete measures, and in a broader range.