Interview: BRI to bring higher quality of development, says Swedish expert

STOCKHOLM, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- Building upon the great achievements of the past ten years, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will only go forward with new energy and diversified components, a Swedish expert told Xinhua on Friday.

"It will be greener with new investments in clean technology and infrastructure, and it will be shared by all nations," said Hussein Askary, vice chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden (BRIX), who has just returned to Sweden after participating in the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF).

The high-profile forum, held in Beijing last week, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was proposed by China in 2013 and aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe, Africa and beyond.

"While the talk elsewhere in the world was about wars, destruction, and existential dangers to humankind, here the discussion was about peace, construction, and prosperity for all nations," Askary said.

The concepts presented, such as "China can only do well when the world is doing well" and "when China does well, the world will get even better," overturned all geopolitical and zero-sum game notions, said Askary.

The BRF shows that "the world majority are eager to intensify cooperation with China to jointly build the BRI into the world's most significant development initiative," he added.

"Many voices in the West were saying that the BRI will be 'scaled down' or even 'rolled back,' but here we saw that the BRI will grow by leaps and bounds," said Askary.

"Together with the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI), and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), the BRI will create the best platform to pull the world off the brink of abyss we find ourselves facing due to wars, financial crises, and threat of pandemics," said Askary.

The GDI, GSI, and GCI proposed by China guide the advance of human society across these three dimensions, offering China's solutions to major challenges pertaining to peace and development for humanity.

The BRI will contribute more to bridging the gap of infrastructure deficit in the developing countries, he said, adding that it will bring higher quality of development through new technologies and digitization.

The first ten years witnessed much experimenting in uncharted waters, and the BRI has been more "concrete and practical," he said. "In the next ten years, we will see a real transformation of the BRI into a truly global process."